Phrase – Gears of war
1) Me:
Site 1: Gears of war is a game for the x-box 360, so the first site is the home page for the game.
Site 2: Sends me to the x-box 360 page with the limited edition gears of war 3 x-box 360.
Site 3: It’s the Wikipedia page for Gears of war.
The first site that popped up was the home page for the game, so that wasn’t a big surprise since it’s the most relevant webpage to the game. For the second one though, it took me to the x-box 360 webpage showing me the limited Gears of War 3 x-box 360. I knew that this would happen since Gears of War 3 is coming out next week and I’ve been constantly looking up the limited edition x-box 360 for the past week. The 3rd website was the Wikipedia page for Gears of War, which explains in the history of the game, the creators, and information about the storyline/gameplay, etc. I have been to this site a couple of times, so that probably influenced the searches a little.
2) Friend:
Site 1: Same as mine
Site 2: Home Page for the game, but a different part of the website
Site 3: The website of Epic games which is the company that created Gears of war
My friend isn’t a fan of gears of war, so he ended up just getting the generic searches when he googled Gears of War. Me and my friend both got the same first website, but for the second it was different. Since he hasn’t been searching the limited edition 360 like I have, the 2nd website for him wasn’t a site linking him to the 360, but again directed him toward home page. Then for the 3rd website he got directed to the webpage of Epic Games, which is the company and created Gears of War. The site has information about their projects/games, when new add-ons come out for a game, etc.
3)
The internet has never been a private thing someone can use and expect to hide the things they do. Everything you do over the internet is made public to everyone, so what’s so bad about Google using it to our advantage? The individualized search is a plus for me because it knows what I’m looking for and puts it at the top of the searches for me. Sure Pariser says that it’s a “filter bubble” and you’ll only get one side of an argument, story, news, etc. which to him is a bad thing. Yes, obviously it is a bad thing, but honestly if you’re using Google to look up important news around the world and information, already it seems like you’re not really that interested in it. You could easily avoid Google and go to sites like CNN where you won’t get a one-sided story, unless of course it’s about politics. Politics is going to be one-sided whether you use Google or not. News stations, radio stations, and many other broadcasting shows/radios have been biased on one side since Google was even invented, so of course you’re going to get a “one-sided” story when using individualized search on Google. If you’re really trying to get more knowledge on politics then you’d know that you’d have to look up multiple sites and articles to get both sides of a story. In actuality Google isn’t doing anything new by “filtering” the information it gives you because all it’s doing is directing you to webpages.
Now you might be saying “What if they don’t have any knowledge about the subject, but are trying to learn more about it?” If you’re just starting to look up a certain subject/category then the individualized search doesn’t apply because it doesn’t know yet where you go to for the topic. In order for the individualized search to work it had to have tracked where you have gone for the topic and that’s impossible if it’s you’re first time looking it up. In that case, you are not being blocked from the knowledge out there since you get all of it in the beginning. After finding out what you are interested in about the topic, Google is then able to personalize you’re search since it knows what links you’ll click on and which ones you won’t. In the end the internet is still a space for free knowledge and exchange of ideas.
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