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"I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'Science Fiction' and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Filter Program  
  Using programs to filter Internet results; a person need see only what they want to see.  

This is a very early reference to a problem that has become increasingly common, and has already divided our country into groups of people who are completely unable to agree on the simplest things.

People bought personalized filter programs to skim a few droplets from that sea [of information] and keep the rest out. For some, subjective reality became the selected entertainments and special-interest zines passed though by those tailored shells.

...a woman hears and reads only opinions that match her own, because other points of view are culled by her loyal guardian software.

Technovelgy from Earth, by David Brin.
Published by Bantam in 1990
Additional resources -

As it turns out, one of the characters has a plan to avoid that problem:

To avoid such staleness, Jen had hired a famous rogue hacker... to design her own filter... one in five files would pop up randomly, in defiance of her own parameters.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Earth
  More Ideas and Technology by David Brin
  Tech news articles related to Earth
  Tech news articles related to works by David Brin

Filter Program-related news articles:
  - UK Internet Filters Default To 'Family-Friendly'

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Science Fiction in the News

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'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'

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