Mind Control, Censorship, and Search Engines - Part Three
Human thought, at least as far as search
engines are concerned, is, more and
more, being molded, shaped, colored,
oriented, and directed by considerations
of formal logic that have little, if
anything, to do with useful, quality
information. In all too many cases,
people tend to think about what the
search engines' visibility blinkers permit
people to think about.
In his seminal work, 1984, George
Orwell described how language,
'Newspeak', could be used to suppress
and circumscribe thought. By skewing
and limiting visibility on the Internet,
search engines place constraints on
thought by effectively limiting the
framework of discourse, and, in the
process, tend to suppress and
circumscribe thought.
In addition, by getting Site owners to pay
for key words, the owners of search
engines have further undermined the free
flow of thought. More specifically,
keywords are no longer tools of
conceptual exploration, but have become,
instead, prostituted symbols which give
expression to the movement of money
rather than meaning.
If search engines - or, the people behind
them, were really interested in providing
Web users with greater access to quality
information, as well as interested in not
running the risk of being involved,
intentionally, or otherwise, with issues of
censorship and mind control, then, there
is a very simple solution to the current
problems surrounding search engines.
Stop making the narrow, biased, formal
and, largely, irrelevant properties of
search engine algorithms the driving
force underlying rankings, and, instead,
just randomly rotate your data base so
that a different set of top 20 Web Sites
would appear on any given day or week.
If they were to pursue the foregoing
suggestion, a great many of the
distortions, games, and commercial
corruptions (e.g., paying for keywords,
as if the ability to pay automatically
could be equated with the offering of
quality) - which, over time, have,
insidiously, worked their way into search
engine functioning - could be eliminated -
without any discernible loss to the
possibility of finding quality Web Sites
through search engines ... in fact, such
possibilities ought to be enhanced by a
random re-sorting of Web Sites. Since
the ranking systems currently used by
search engines are not (and, given the
current state of artificial intelligence,
cannot be) based on issues of quality, the
current modes of ranking are arbitrary,
misleading, intrusive, obstructionist,
limiting, and, inherently, unfair.
At the very least, search engines should
state the structural nature of their
algorithms so that everyone could
understand the significance of what a
high ranking entailed in a given search
engine. People have a right to know how
their inquiries are being skewed and
what the biases and lacunae are which
exist in a given search methodology.
Of course, search engine proprietors are
reluctant to spill the beans in this regard,
because they know what would happen.
Already, ranking and placement
specialists engage in a mixture of reverse
engineering, along with trial and error,
in order to figure out how the algorithms
employed by search engines work, and
every last one of these specialists knows
that ranking often has little to do with
the quality or usefulness of a Site.
Consequently, if these specialists were
given the exact operational parameters
of search engine algorithms, then, search
engines would lose their capacity to
differentiate among all those Web Pages
which had been formatted to
specification as a result of placement
specialists zeroing in on the ranking
secrets of the algorithms used by any
given search engine. Keeping these
secrets hidden, provides search engine
proprietors with the necessary degrees of
ambiguity to ensure that placement
specialists will, at varying junctures,
guess incorrectly about how a search
engine works, and, thereby, create room
to differentiate among Web Sites - even
though this maneuvering room is wholly
arbitrary as far as quality content is
concerned.
Search directories (such as Yahoo),
unlike search engines, employ human
beings to do the collecting, organizing
and ranking of Web Sites, rather than
rely on the limitations of, at least to date,
the not-so-smart methodologies of
artificial intelligence as applied to search
engine programming. Yet, search
directories, like search engines, still rely
on algorithms - that is, a set of rules or
that is used to sort and hierarchically
arrange Web Sites.
Human beings created the algorithms of
search engines, and human beings have
created the algorithms that govern
search directories. While the latter sort
of algorithms tend to be more flexible
and subtle than their search engine
counterparts, they cannot avoid the issue
of reliability in relation to whether, or
not, a given search directory is able to
consistently lead visitors to quality Web
Sites, and this is so because we still don't
know what considerations are fueling
judgements about the characteristics that
allow a given Web Page to be rated in
the top 20 for a particular category.
In fact, the coyness of search directories
in keeping their ranking criteria secret
seems to raise 'open source' sorts of
issue. In other words, one of the main
driving forces behind the concept of
'open source' is that people should be
able to examine the considerations which
structure a language, program, or piece
of software in order to facilitate
discussion about, and improvement of, as
well as enhance competition and
creativity in relation, to a given
language, program or piece of software.
By remaining silent about the criteria
which are used to evaluate and rank
Web Sites, search directories deprive the
Internet community of information which
could be used to form the basis of a
constructive, thorough, critical
discussion about the limits, problems,
and possibilities of search directories.
Furthermore, this silence is entirely
self-serving rather than done in the
interests of the people who use (whether
Site owners or seekers of information)
such services.
The only reasons that I can see for
keeping a lid on the criteria that search
directories are using to rank Web Sites
are three in number:
First, the silence is intended to cover up
the highly subjective nature of the human
algorithms which are used in the judging
and ranking of Web Sites, and, thus,
obscure the fact there is no obvious
reason why one should trust the
judgement of search directories on such
matters, as opposed to someone else's
judgment.
Secondly, the search directories have
little interest in breaking the code of
silence and, thereby, enabling others to
critique what the former are doing, as
well as, possibly, using that critique to
develop a means of better serving the
Internet community through ways that
are capable of superceding the quality
and reliability of service presently
provided by the search directories.
Thirdly, search directories are primarily
about making money, and not about
finding quality Web Sites or becoming
involved in a genuine discussion
concerning the role of search engines
and directories in placing constraints on
information, exploration, and discussion
through the very real manner in which
they skew visibility on the Internet.
Through silence, they feel they can hide
the reality of what they, actually, are
doing.
Search engines and directories are not
inconsequential facets of the Internet.
They shape, alter, color, organize, and
direct a great deal of what goes on
across the Web, and the role and power
which they enjoy needs to be examined
much more carefully than is, presently,or
heretofore has been, the case.
Are all of the foregoing musings just so
much quixotic tilting at windmills?
Perhaps, but as Robert Kennedy once
said: "Others have seen what is and
asked why. I have seen what could be
and asked why not?".
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