Outsourcing Our Lives to Google
I think about how many times a day I use Google search, then I think about how many decisions I make after those searches, and it makes my head spin. Searching for information used to be a process of going to the library, talking to an expert, finding books or articles, reading magazines, and other steps that took much more time and effort. We now have the vast majority of all human knowledge at our fingertips, available instantly to us. That is pretty amazing and a true miracle. Believing we always receive the correct information brings us to a dark side of this.
For thousands of years, we used much the same process to find information - experts, lists, librarians, etc. Only in the last decade or so has that all totally changed. At first the linked-up world of information was wonderful. In many ways, it still is. But things have changed and will continue to change. Paid search results, SEO manipulation, ranked searching, algorithms, A.I., and on and on control the answers and the information you are given when searching. I recently searched on Amazon for a product that I entered by its specific name, yet I still had to scroll through 3 full pages to find the item that I directly named in the search. Other items from other manufactures came before the items I requested. Those manufacturers had paid for that privilege. The same thing happens with all searching, including simply information. It becomes crazy. Can you trust the information that you searched for? How many of us are defining what they see as reality and truth when it is based on an algorithm designed to heighten our emotions, simply to stay on that specific site longer? The terms you use to search on Google may bring up all sorts of unrelated information that could draw you in.
Many are turning to services like reddit. Reddit is a site where you ask questions to actual people. You may not know these people, but they are real, and are there probably with the same interest as you based on your search. People do so because they want to have an actual person help and guide them, even if they don't know that person at all. What Reddit brings to the process is a conversation, or the ability to see past conversations, with a real person.
As a society we seem to be reverting back to the way we did this for thousands of years.
