Thursday, October 24, 2013

Google Google

You don't search things anymore, you google them. Ever since I began pursuing my higher studies, I've been hearing about the landmark paper - Brin and Page [1998] - sometimes in context, sometimes in jest that its effectiveness was not realised at that time. The fundamental idea - PageRank - found many applications thereafter. The point I'm trying to make is, Google is extremely good at discovering data that its user wants - and as personalised as possible.

One of the more charming aspects of Google, autocomplete, caught my attention. As always, autocomplete is a reflection of popularity of searches with the typed words of your query.

Today is United Nations Day. In the few weeks preceding, United Nations Women had an interesting ad campaign.


These results are region specific. I tried "women should" from my region and a very interesting gem I unearthed was "women should not be educated". Guffawing loudly, I spent an hour reading arguments that convinced me that feminism is very much necessary in this day and age as well. At least, to acknowledge that sexism and a sense of telling women what to do or even discuss what they should be allowed to do pervades global society.