[caption id="attachment_1302" align="alignleft" width="491"]
Click the image to see how they always get their search results.[/caption]
Well, I certainly didn't need an American search engine to tell me, a Canadian, that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were celebrating their 140th anniversary. Actually, I had no idea whatsoever. I just didn't need an American search engine, pointing out my ignorance -- or maybe I did. That is, after all, the kind of the job Google does now, isn't it; keeping track of just how dumb I am, and making allowances.
There's probably more ways, but, Google knows, I just can't remember.
I have joked that, thanks to the Internet, I don't need a brain anymore -- that the content from ten-million-or-so people equals about five smart people, and that's enough to take care of all my intelligence needs. Want proof? Just Google "how to tie yor shuz."If you're still remembering how to do stuff like that, then you're working to hard.
After reading (at least the cover of) Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble, I could have become concerned by this so-called filter bubble -- how Google has been spoon-feeding mebiased personalized search results based on my previous search history, to keep me happily Googling for more, but golly, what choice do I have?
The catchy phrase, "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." lies somewhere at the heart of what Internet privacy activists, such as Eli Pariser, are on about. Others, such as Derek Powazek, say the phrase just lies. I remember back in the latter 1990s when the free version of the dominant Macintosh email client Eudora began displaying advertising banners -- there was no revolution, and so it began.
One key to succeeding in the Internet Age seems to me to involve profitably identifying things people won't miss. This is a hard one for me to explain: Remember long-play records, and all that dynamic range they could hold in those wee grooves? Well, the MP3 format threw that stuff away to compress the file, and no one cared; they still preferred MP3s to LPs.
Google, Facebook, Wordpress.com -- all social media, are learning to profit off of the kinds of personal information, which people don't care about, don't think is important -- their likes, their shares, their search patterns. People are just tossing this stuff out on the Internet, and social media is binning it, and selling it. I'd say it's like human derivatives, if I had more than a clue how fiscal instruments like that worked.
But what am I saying, I don't need to try and understand or remember that sort of stuff anymore. I may not know [fill in the Google search bar], but I know what I [like].
Click the image to see how they always get their search results.[/caption]Well, I certainly didn't need an American search engine to tell me, a Canadian, that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were celebrating their 140th anniversary. Actually, I had no idea whatsoever. I just didn't need an American search engine, pointing out my ignorance -- or maybe I did. That is, after all, the kind of the job Google does now, isn't it; keeping track of just how dumb I am, and making allowances.
How Google is my brain. Let's list the ways:
- understands and corrects my crappy spelling
- answers all my stupid questions to the best of the Internet's ability
- handles all my correspondence
- used to be able to handle all my RSS feeds
- Since 2009, has been tailoring my search results to make me happy
There's probably more ways, but, Google knows, I just can't remember.
I have joked that, thanks to the Internet, I don't need a brain anymore -- that the content from ten-million-or-so people equals about five smart people, and that's enough to take care of all my intelligence needs. Want proof? Just Google "how to tie yor shuz."If you're still remembering how to do stuff like that, then you're working to hard.
After reading (at least the cover of) Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble, I could have become concerned by this so-called filter bubble -- how Google has been spoon-feeding me
My brain is in the cloud. Does that mean it's free?
The catchy phrase, "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." lies somewhere at the heart of what Internet privacy activists, such as Eli Pariser, are on about. Others, such as Derek Powazek, say the phrase just lies. I remember back in the latter 1990s when the free version of the dominant Macintosh email client Eudora began displaying advertising banners -- there was no revolution, and so it began.
One key to succeeding in the Internet Age seems to me to involve profitably identifying things people won't miss. This is a hard one for me to explain: Remember long-play records, and all that dynamic range they could hold in those wee grooves? Well, the MP3 format threw that stuff away to compress the file, and no one cared; they still preferred MP3s to LPs.
Facebook is a dumpster?
Google, Facebook, Wordpress.com -- all social media, are learning to profit off of the kinds of personal information, which people don't care about, don't think is important -- their likes, their shares, their search patterns. People are just tossing this stuff out on the Internet, and social media is binning it, and selling it. I'd say it's like human derivatives, if I had more than a clue how fiscal instruments like that worked.
But what am I saying, I don't need to try and understand or remember that sort of stuff anymore. I may not know [fill in the Google search bar], but I know what I [like].
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