Google Alerts (Teaser) and Mirror's Edge

I've been looking into Google Alerts as a way of monitoring the Internet for information on digital worlds and civilizations, and I'm thinking that this will be a really effective way of catching the latest information on new technologies and trends. I made three different alerts today, and I'm going to monitor them over the next few days to see what quality of information it really picks up, and then I'll post a review on Monday as to my findings.

Creative Commons License, Tom Francis

In other news, I recently stumbled on a game called Mirror's Edge, and I've been enjoying exploring that world and thinking about the implications of some of the ideas. The game is based in a dystopian world wherein a hegemonic political/police entity controls all information highways. As a result, the only safe means of transporting information is through runners who use parkour (you should watch this: it's amazing) to navigate rooftops and abandoned buildings in their efforts to evade capture. The game originally interested me because of the parkour aspect, in that I'm working on a novel that features parkour runners or "kites," but in any case, as with most well-made games, Mirror's Edge has got me thinking about some other important ideas.

Long Tails, and Machines, and Algorithms, Oh My!

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?