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The Googlewashing Of Our Language
KIondike writes "The Register talks about how a term ("Second Superpower") coined by the anti-war culture suddenly got radically neutered and altered by a weblog that a lot of people link to. Searching for the term on Google now brings up his blog and other people talking about his blog for the first several entries. Can Google's power to give information to the people be misused and perverted? This only took 42 days." First the widespread usage of "googling" to mean web searching, and now this.
While the effects of linking are multiplicative in their effect of raising a page's ranking, the problem is that it requires someone to actually put those terms into the search engine to get to them. If someone is going to find a definition of a word, they'll probably go to a dictionary. While I do see an increase in the practice of entering a phrase into the search engine to learn more about it (I've done it) I would consider this more mis-/dis-information or tangential discussion than actually changing the meaning of the words.
Then again, it is kind of an interesting phenomemon, sort of similar to that blog-scraping-trend-watching program that appeared a few weeks ago on here. The difference is that people don't really see trends unless they look for them, or look at many different examples of something. The meaning of the word isn't going to change because a few people over a short period of time are talking about it differently. It won't change the meaning for people who already know the word and aren't exposed to any of the discussion, which will probably be far more than those taking part in the discussion of the alternative meaning of the word or phrase.
I have the feeling that I've spoken much but said little...
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
Indeed, google is mentioned as a method for finding answers to technical issues in a recent Microsoft survey I participated in.
Google is the Next Big Thing.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Okay, let me get this straight. One guy calls world public opinion a second superpower. Another guy calls informed netizens a second superpower a few days (weeks?) later. Now the Reg is upset that the first guy is not showing up on Google? What the f*** ??
Does he have a right to come first on a google search? Maybe if more people linked to him, he would be first. How is this a conspiracy? Is there any evidence that Google actively did this? If they are so pissed about it, may be they should start a link campaign, or propagate their version of the "second superpower" more...
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
The first rule of Googlewashing is you don't talk about Googlewashing. The second rule of Googlewashing is you don't talk about Googlewashing.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Try searching for Second superpower -moore and all the references to the James Moore article magically vanish. Wow, that was hard.. .. and no, I see very little difference between the term as defined in this article, and the term as defined elsewhere. "Public Opinion" in the Moore article, "Public Opinion" in all the other search results. Where's the Googlewash?
The register article didn't make it very clear what the 'original' definition was supposed to be, and I had assumed that the US Government and/or pro-war groups had been trying to redefine the "Axis of Evil" as the "Second Superpower.", because otherwise I just don't see what the problem is.
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The idea of page-ranking surely is more to do with relevance of a search term than to find information that is hard to find.
I think the last thing I want to do is search for a term and then find some obscure reference to it that has no actual relevance to what I was searching for.
I don't want to be searching for Slashdot and then find some obscure reference to it on some random site I never even cared about in the first place.
If you want to find something less relevant to what you're searching for then use more complex search terms, and luckily Google, and most other search engines allow you to do this.
If you don't want to find Slashdot in your search for Slashdot, for some perverted reason, then -site:slashdot.org.
Did you read the first link? As of right now this is what I get.
Now, let's look through the page. Nope, Moore doesn't appear anywhere. Ok, this seems fine.
Oh. Wait. That paragraph that's triggering the Google hit looks familiar. Thankfully there's a link to where the page's creator got it. Let's follow it, shall we?
Hmmmm... Well, what do you know? She got the paragraph from the page we are at, which, if you check the link to the original article on that page, got it from Mr. Moore's essay.
Hmmmmm.... Let's take a look at the rest of the links on this 1st page of results, shall we?
Well, the second one makes an explicit mention of "JimMoore?'s idea" right in the Google summary. So it's out.
The third one seems a little confused as to what the hell it means by it, but it references "Joi Ito" which, having read the Register article, means that it's a reference to Moore's definition.
Numbers 4 and 5 are links to different pages as the same site for number 1.
6 links to a sports article from the Palm Beach Post.
7 & 8 link to "Library Planet discussion on Second Superpower" which, if you follow the link on the page, ends up being Mr. Moore's article again.
9 links to comments on an article called "The Second Superpower" which, if you go back to the site's main page, turns out to m=be Mr. Moore yet again.
That leaves just site number 10 on the first page. It's a historical discussion on the Truman doctrine and the Cold War.
So: 8 out of the first 10 results returned by "Second Superpower" -moore reference Mr. Moore. The other two have nothing to do with the definition referred to in the Register article.
It seems to me that knowing how to use Google has little to do with why the authors were unable to find it.
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
Google essentially fails to correct for the number of links a page author tends to put in, meaning that authors who just put in a lot of links have a larger effect of google than authors with a sparser linking style. Since authors who put in a lot of links tend to have readers you do so as well, communities with this behaviour are overrepresented on google (when they happen to mention the subject you're searching on, at least).
Probably the PageRank effect should be reduced if the linking page links a lot (*1/root(links) or *log(links)/links). Of course, google can probably come up with a better solution.
The other thing is that google should probably attempt to produce the most unconnected highly-ranked pages, since if a page is connected to a search result, you can probably find it that way. This would lead to having a blog entry at the top and no other blog entries near it.
Catchy rhetoric, but ignorant of the facts. Britain has a population of around 60 million. On the 15th of February around a million of us were not only against the war, but felt so strongly that we spent our free time and money making our way to London to protest.
There was no violence, no vandalism, just a monumental expression of public opinion. Young and old; families and people in suits outnumbering the dreadlocked and tie-died. It was the biggest political protest in this country, to date, and similar events happened in cities across the globe. Very few saw violence instigated by the protesters, because -- like myself -- the majority were totally unlike the provocative stereotypes you invoke.
The very thing that makes these people a superpower is that they are not just extremists, rather a vast number of responsible, everyday people who will not support military agression without international consensus, especially where it promises numerous economic and political rewards to the participants.
Second Superpower?
imo Orlowski's gripe is unwarranted and Moore's proposition is interesting. Blogs are the big media story of the aggression in Iraq. Even the old, broadcast media (e.g. bbc) are scrambling to get in on it. The key aspect of current media usage is that tv viewing is down, and internet searches are up. People are skeptical and are seeking out alternative sources of information. Blogs are getting crazy traffic. And on search engines "al jazeera" is more sought after than "sex." Story here. This ain't simply armchair resistance; it's a widespread and determined rejection of official viewpoints, and that's way political. The phenomenon suggests that the internet is to some degree realizing its potential for making information free and allowing people to be better informed citizens of the world.
Endorsement, in the Google sense, doesn't mean that you endorse the views espoused in the linked-to page. It simply means that you believe the linked-to page accurately represents the text inside your what blah is about</a> tags. I personally think Dennis Kucinich is a steaming pile of crap, but the link from his name in my most recent blog entry goes to a news story that should be relevant to anyone searching for "Dennis Kucinich".
You're not making a moral judgment on the page, you're just "voting" on what the page represents with the text you use for the link.