April 9th and continuing on April 23rd:
Google Search: How it works (please learn about the basic technical aspects of Google Search).
What is Pagerank? Read about the development here.
Article by Nicholas Carr: "Is Google Making us Stupid?" from Atlantic July/Aug 2008)
Some questions for thought:
1. What can't you find using Google? Post your ideas..
2. Perform a search in which Wikipedia entries do NOT come up. Give some examples...
3. Global Google: Try to get results for "Africa" that are written by non-Westerners. Try to get results that aren't commercial interests. Post these...
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This is very interesting and reminds me of an interesting conversation that I was having with my roommate. He is an international student from China, computer science major and is very interested in Google's philosophy, development, and nature as a company. That is all nice but what was very interesting to me was his experience with censorship and Google's control of the media. With his experience, he seems to be under the impression and I think he is correct in this assumption that it is not Google but rather the Chinese government. He gave the example of "googling" the "olympics" this summer in China. He said that unless you read english, you would have never known about the controversy, etc that surrounded the olympics.
ReplyDeleteHis point in the end was that...although Google does not necessarily delete information, they are able to make information so obsolete, so hard to find, that it is virtually non-existent. I think this is a very interesting point, not because I necessarily don't trust Google. In fact, I really trust Google. But...the idea that they can control this information is a tad scary...even for me. Probably the reason that monopolies are never a good thing. We need those other search engines to keep everyone in balance.
This little anecdote just reminded me of some of the questions you posed about getting results that did not have commercial interests. It is very difficult. And frankly...I believe as we enter into more of the "web 2.0", "new media" and "social media" realm...we will see less of this. I mean...this may be a silly example. But look at Ashton Kutcher pass CNN in twitter followers? Could this be the new trend? Our way of consumption is vastly changing and we are going to have to adapt to this.