Textbook Google

In our society, all things bound in a textbook are considered fact. When we read war dates, accounts from the trenches, or what side was good and what side was evil, we take it as gospel. When something is printed in a textbook it's the closest we come to say, "I know that to be certain!"

However, there have been many articles concerning the veracity of Japanese textbooks. They’ve excluded and downplayed some WWII atrocities…and that changes history! This changes what Japanese schoolchildren learn to be true and factual. However, this is not the focal point of this entry, this is an example of what's quietly happening to our society since the prevalence of Google.

To no fault of their own, Google has become an incredible search engine. We type in something we're looking for, and BAM, we've got our answer within milliseconds. The only problem is, we read what Google's computerized algorithm considers to be important. I don't have any idea how the algorithm works, but I'm sure most people only look at the top results on the first or second page. We're voluntarily monopolizing Internet search and it scares me.

What if there are 50 better articles out there, but Google only considers them page six worthy? We need to diversify our search engines and our algorithms or else we're all just pooling from the same source. Google doesn't provide results in order of their veracity. Google starts to develop trends, and culls more highly trafficked sites. Notice that Wikipedia and twitter and facebook all start to accumulate above the fold? We're all reading the same textbook and there isn't an impartial authority checking the authenticity.

What's stopping Google from putting some disparaging blogs or articles about their company on the 35th page? I by no means am accusing Google of doing anything like that, I'm just making sure we're all aware that we've accepted Google as the only search engine...and that's dangerous!