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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.
Googlewhacking, Googlewashing, Googling, what else are there?
Google is a freaking web-based index and search tool. Why is this a concern at all? If Second Superpower is the name of a company, than I would expect to see it be on the list where it belongs. If someones blog or site is named that, what is the issue? Many people are linking to it, and it escalates the PageRank.
Welcome to proof that Google works the way it was intended, in only 42 days!
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
We just bitch a lot; we aren't "protestors" of anything more than megalomaniacle corporations and bribed governement officials. See the difference now?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Really? Did you actually read the weblog in question? Here's a quote from the second paragraph (no pun intended):
Sounds like an anti-war movement to me, especially when they use the words "peace campaign" in the description.
My website has become the first site in every
.pdf formatted spec sheets for
google search for several models of laptop
computer. This in spite of the fact that it
is served over a 128k link from a P120 laptop
in my kitchen.
90% of the traffic from this machine is people
downloading the
these rather popular computers... apparently my
site is the only one in the United States that
has the spec sheets, so I rose to the top based
on some preference for U.S. based sites. Most
of the hits come from overseas, so it is not just
that they weight toward the nearest site, but that
they weight U.S. sites more heavily.
So how does one quote a search engine as a source in a term paper anyways?
I don't know about anyone else but Google certainly isn't the single source to define whatever topics I'm doing research into.
And by research I'm not talking specifically some kind of thesis or paper. I mean even the little stuff such as a definition of a word or phrase that I've come across in a book or an online article.
There are plenty of other search engines and plenty of other indexing algorithms to go with it. I can't let one "fuzzy logic" formula control my view of the world.
This is why when learning how to write a term paper in high school we're told to get at least X number of different sources. Perhaps a refresher course where we replace the concept of "term paper" with "internet".
And lastly, is this a trend that we need to worry about? Does Google really have that kind of influence that if it starts linking to one definition of a phrase instead of the other, the world is going to conform to what Google tells us?
Farked if I know. Or care.
[insert response noting reference to fark and its influence over me. TIC ppl.]
1. Define your idea/agenda in a proactive, positive way, ala pro-life vs. anti-abortion or pro-choice vs. pro-abortion.
2. Parasitic exposure to a wider audience, or an audience that is seeking something other than what you have to deliver. Consider this the Spammizing of culture and marketing.
As to this latter trend, the more media channels there are to promulgate a message, the more intense seems to become the competition to exploit them by whatever means.
Letter To Iran
No matter how much 'crap' you pile on, at the base core Google is search engine. It's not a creator or define-or of words and phrases.
Google's ranking system (IMHO) is just like a movie critic - there for information but if you base everything on it you'd better remove the horseblinders so you can at least see someone slapping you upside the head!
Orwell's Big Brother will come to pass if we continue to let others tell us what what we should think. I know it's hard for some people but try to draw your conclusions AFTER consulting more than one source...
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
And the fact that the stupid stuff got pushed to the top through this democratic process is nothing new. Just like the stupid people seem to out-breed the smart ones, the general populace has an appetite for pseudoinformation; content that is more aimed more at stirring emotions than at informing.
Real information is burried under lots of chaff. As one of the "intelligent" people of this world, you should already understand (and expect) that you have to dig to get to it.
At PDI, we did some of the very early, but not the earliest, morph animation. The earliest developers/users were Tom Brigham at NYIT and Doug Smythe at ILM.
One thing we did, though, as our tool was used over and over again back in '90 and '91 was to push the use of the word 'morph'. We were working on things like the Michael Jackson Black or White video, things that really pushed the technique into many people's eyeballs. ILM was pushing the word 'morf'.
A Stanford student did a survey of the use of the word 'morph' in the news media, and it exploded from almost unused to being used in thousands of articles over the period that we were striving to push the word out, and as we were doing those videos. It was fun to coin a word, and have it become accepted.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I find it funny that the complaint is over that part of the deffinition. Last time I checked power meant to have actual ability to change something (or to have power), and super power was power above normal power.
Given these two facts, how can peace freaks of the world be considered a second power? The truth of the matter is that they have no power! Thay haven't changed anything. They've increased the arrests, and in some case proven themselves hipocrits(sp?)--fyi, the college incedent where one prowar supporter was beat up by peace freaks protesting the war. Since they haven't changed anything becaus ethe last time I checked America is still liberating Iraq, they have no power. Since they have no power, they can't be considered a power, and they can most deffinately not be considered a super power.
Most democratic countries allow people to speak their minds to some certain degree. If these people go overboard, or get carried away, then they will be arrested. If they attempt to stop a city, state, country, etc., they'll be warned and then arrested after a little while.
Peace protesters have NO POWER. Thus, they cannot be a super power. I really don't see why they are arguing about the the stupid phrasing when it's a moot(sp) point.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
The logicical conclusion, IMO, is to bar blogs from being spidered by google.
If nothing else it will prevent me from having to hear about everyone's freaking lunch any further.
I don't know why people are complaining, this isn't the first time a word's meaning was replaced by another, nor will it be the last...
Look at the words, gay and chauvinist. Gay used to mean "to be happy", but now when most people use it; it ussually refers to homosexuality. Chauvinist use to mean, "to be ultra patriotic/nationalistic", but now it's used to denote a male sexist... More recently look at the words, bad and sick... same thing....
One of the things we discussed on the Emergent Democracy list is the problem that Google assumes a link is an endorsement. When I link to Orlowski's hogwash, I am pointing out what is wrong with it,but Google takes that as an endorsement by me.
My Vote Links proposal is meant to fix this.
There are different nuances, but I think the blog is within the bounds of legitimate discussion on "Second Superpower."
But there are two important issues raised by this example. One, James F. Moore never credits Tyler (or anyone else) with coining the phrase. The only mention of The New York Times is in the context of the importance of big, possibly biased news media. That is out-of-line for legitimate discussion, especially since he seems to indicate a connection to Harvard in his byline.
The second issue is the way Google separates news from the rest of the web. A search of "Second Superpower" in Google news provides a much broader discussion of the concept than a Google web search. Maybe the real issue is that blogs are not static content, but actually a new form of journalism. A simple fix would be for Google to list blogs with news.
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.
How do you know this?
The last whitepaper Google published on their design (cool though it is) is *years* upon *years* out of date, and AFAIK they're not handing out info on the specific metrics, and haven't for a long time. They have definitely revised their system since then to avoid various attacks people have tried on it.
They could be doing precisely what you're predicting.
May we never see th
Another reason is that I consider the Constitution of the United States to be the single greatest document ever known to man.
[snip]
The Constitution puts the power into the hands of free men and not the government.
If you love it so much, what are you doing about the people at Guantanamo Bay who have been denied their constitutional rights ever since shortly after 9/11?
I personally think it's stupid for a government to be more concerned about what the U.S. is doing and how they stack up to the U.S. than to be concerned about it's own people.
Governments are concerned about the U.S. because the U.S. has just demonstrated that they have no qualms whatsoever about invading another country if it has something they want. Do you honestly believe that Iraq poses a credible threat to the United States? Put simply, governments are concerned about what the U.S. is doing because they don't want to be on the receiving end of America's 'justice', 'liberation', and whatever else you may choose to call it.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
It's in my best interests for the U.S. to be on top. The United Nations doesn't hold my best interests. France sure as fuck doesn't.
You know, the same reasoning would (to some extent) make you prefer despotism to democracy. Your neighbor doesn't hold your best interests, you do. Still, you agree (I assume) to give your neighbor(s) some power over you. I don't think that France or French people want to decide what the US or American people should do in their everyday life. The idea here is that in some rare critical international issues (read "war") a "democratic" international body (the UN) should override individual countries interests. I'm not sure how far I can push this nations/people analogy, but I think you get the idea.
I consider the Constitution of the United States to be the single greatest document ever known to man
Everybody in the US seems to believe this, or that no country is freer than the US, or whatever along the same lines... This is truly amazing! Do they tell you that repeatedly in school as soon as you can talk? Come on, who can say that the US constitution is better than any other democratic country's. Are you a consitutional lawyer? Have you actually read the US constitution? Have you read other countries constitutions?
Besides, more important than the constitution is the way it is implemented. Have you visited other countries, do you read foreign newspapers? All democracies have their flaws. I acknowledge that most European countries have serious issues regarding corruption and excessive bureaucracy. But the US is far from flawless! To a foreigner, the deep (incestuous) ties between the government and big business in the US should be a major concern for any responsible American citizen. Also, many Europeans are puzzled (to say the least) by the absence of clear distinction between state and religion in the US. This feeling is exacerbated by the recent drift of the Iraq war toward a religious war. This seemingly absolute faith that the US is right or has moral superiority is both a strength and weakness for America. Yet I think that Americans should think about it a little bit more. It cant't hurt.
This post is not intended as a flame, nor does it want to protest or support the US intervention in Iraq. I'm just trying to improve my (and maybe your) understanding of these complex issues.
And yes, I'm French, you can start frogbashing.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.