The Information Isolation Trope: Isolation, Infection, and Information Silos in Early American Literature

Abstract

Many early American novels feature at least one character who becomes physically isolated, is restricted access to communication, becomes ill, spreads their sickness, and then either dies or becomes permanently disabled. This repeated pattern of isolation, infection, information, and death/disability underscores just how concerned early Americans were with the potentially harmful effects of information silos. The concern with information siloing, at first glance, seems anachronistic to early America. Eli Pariser popularized the concept of a “filter bubble” in 2011 when lamenting the many ways that algorithms create echo chambers and political fragmentation. While this essay concurs that content-recommendation bubbles are exacerbated by new media technologies, early American novels suggest that people have been worrying about the regulation and isolation of information since the dawn of the new republic. Early American novels—particularly those published between 1789 and 1815—are often read as seduction narratives, didactic narratives, or both; this article argues that attending to this pattern offers a new way of reading early American fiction that underscores just how concerned readers and writers were with the potentially harmful effects of information silos and the regulation of information on the body, the body politic, and public health.