I AM CARRYING OUT A LITTLE EXPERIMENT. PLEASE POST A COMENT TO THIS POST - EVEN IF YOU DIDNT READ IT. THIS WILL ENABLE ME TO GAUGE HOW MANY OF YOU FACEBOOK DECIDED TO EXPOSE TO THE POST. THANKS! JORGE I miss AND, OR and NOT Remember the old search engines? AltaVista, for example?They were very powerful, with enormous databases, but hey were also pretty dumb. You typed a few words in, and they returned all the pages that contained those words. Not very clever. If you wanted something more specific, you had to carry out an advanced search, meaning using some Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT): give me all pages containing containing the words big and brother but not reality show. Then came Google. It only asked you to type in a few words. No operators. No thinking needed on the users part. Just a few words. And out came a spot-on list of pages, with what you were looking for near the top. It seemed like magic. Some magical algorithm, which google kept (and still keeps, as far as iI know) carefully under wraps. This was much easier, and faster, so we gave up the Boolen ops -but we also relinquished control. What most of us probably did not consider carefully at the time is that we were buying into the idea that it was OK for the information providers to decide for us, without our even knowing how that decision was arrived at, what we would get exposed to. With Boolean operators, we knew exactly what we had asked the engine to provide for us. Google, instead, made that decision for us. We were content to accept that because we perceived that what it was giving us in exchange was something we wanted. Thus started a long slide down where we have been providing Google, Facebook and a few other information-gatherimg behemoths with more and more information about ourselves while at the same time giving them more and more control over how they use that information provided by us to decide what information to present to us in turn. This Latest piece of research shows just what may be happening as a result. I hope Facebook will expose you to this post. I AM CARRYING OUT A LITTLE EXPERIMENT. PLEASE POST A COMENT TO THIS POST - EVEN IF YOU DIDNT READ IT. THIS WILL ENABLE ME TO GAUGE HOW MANY OF YOU FACEBOOK DECIDED TO EXPOSE TO THE POST. THANKS! JORGE
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 18:10:28 +0000
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