Social networking or guided thinking?

So social networks are all the rage, Facebook, MySpace. Webpages tell us what we "may" want to buy based on previous decisions by you or someone else. Does this eventually drive us all down the same path? Help us form the same opinions? Is there a place for a free thinker? You know, that person that thinks outside the box.

We have raised a generation of people that depend on just these things to make everyday decisions. Don't think so??? Go to Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com and enter in a book title you are searching for. You will find it and have ten other similar ones recommended to you. Would you have found these any other way? Possibly! Possibly not! These are called, recommender systems. Recommender or guided thinking? I guess we'll see.