Today’s discussion coupled with last week’s discussion about long tails got me thinking about the algorithms that are used in digital
technology, particularly things like Google’s predictive search feature. The
machine can anticipate what we want. Eerie.
(This was an awesome video I found about becoming an “Autocompleter” for Google. I think this was how they did it before they used algorithms. Haha!)
This was an interesting article from PC World about using
the predictive algorithms. It touches on topics like Facebook friends, Pandora
music, online dating, and Netflix movies.
The most fascinating thing to me, however, is that it points out that
Google is changing the way we think because it is thinking for us. Because of
this, we are not remembering as much as we used to because we rely on the
internet to remember, in a way, for us.
So what do you think? Do you think we rely too much on these
algorithms to tell us what we should think, or is it another nifty way to sort
through all of the material that is online to find the information we are
looking for?
I feel like the digital world has both shrunk and expanded my memory. On one hand, I can't remember little things very well anymore, because I think, 'I don't need to remember it! I can just look it up on Google.' On the other hand, though, I can look pretty much anything up on Google, so it's granted me access to ages and ideas that I would have never experienced otherwise, thus, in a sense, expanding my memory. I think that's kind of what it's talking about in the scriptures when it says that they expand your memory. Maybe this is a physical blessing, but I feel that it refers more specifically to the fact that the scriptures give us exposure to a much broader base of knowledge and experiences.
ReplyDeleteLike Greg I think it's a mixture of both. I really would be terrified to write a paper if I was not allowed to use the internet. Even just finding a book in the library, I'd probably need the library's search engine first. In many ways, I guess this has handicapped me in a sense, but in other ways, I probably never would have discovered some of the books and research and information that is out there f it were not for the digital world.
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