How to settle a mint choc vs cookie and cream yummyness fight: http://www.google.com/trends

A topic I’m passionate about… Google. Or rather search dominance.

The Times:
White bread for young minds, says university professor

Google is “white bread for the mind”, and the internet is producing a generation of students who survive on a diet of unreliable information, a professor of media studies will claim this week.

My comment:

Article just started to get interesting when it ended there. Media literacy… interpretive skills – absolutely! Duh!
Could fundamentals in basic education really be so lacking? Media literacy is an incredibly important research skill and life skill as it always was – before the web, as it will be after the web. In an ideal world Google would be a great tool that revealed how many points of view there are out there, how rich perspectives and opinions and how diverse facts can be.

My main beef would be that Google (rather online search) should be a feast of delicacies rather than the meat & potatoes it serves up. It’s hard to penetrate a search result beneath big business. Google is a commercial solution to search and a market dominator. As a commercial solution they have sought to protect the algorithm (and their market position) and have created a field of specialist knowledge along with it. Far from democratic, search results are elite. Search results support the dominate view.

Scott Berkun – Is Google White Bread for Young Minds?

See what Scott had to say on the issue – he’s a great thinker. I keep track of his blog & was referred to the times article from there… spot my comment. (similar to above… )

It doesn’t surprise me that audience consumption & the direction of / role that media plays in democracy makes a key point in Al Gore’s Assault on Reason. It seems as though Al’s personal accounts of the effect of media on democracy will deliver impact. Interestingly, Al appears to favor interactive media for its ability to provide platforms for participation and makes calls for the www to remain open.

Calling for an open web – I wonder what Al thinks of Google & if he in fact uses it at all.

 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1622015,00.html

Google Will Eat Itself is genius.

The idea behind this project is to use money earned from selling advertising space to Google to buy Google stock for us. Yes, us. Read the rest of this entry »