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Post Titled: Google Democracy
at work when a Gurnseyman, a Welshman and an American cannot agree on the proper spelling of some word in the English language then we resort to what we call Google Democracy- that is; we Google all possible versions of the word and whichever comes up with the most Google search results wins.
EXAMPLE: INTILLS or INSTILS -??? BOTH ARE CORRECT! (who knew?!?)
Hypothetically, there is a (huge and gaping) weakness in this methodology- i.e. if about half of the people who write the word on the web spell it incorrectly, OR if the incorrect spelling returns MORE results than the correct spelling. Such a system could actually alter the way we spell words. (here's where I am once again reminded of the film Idiocracy, which most everyone agrees is a bad movie with a great premise, such a good premise in fact that it is somehow validated.)
Anyhow, on a similar vein (to Google democracy) I found this NY Times article: "What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer" Dan sent this morning was particularly interesting - if follows a similar line of thinking/method... basically.
at work when a Gurnseyman, a Welshman and an American cannot agree on the proper spelling of some word in the English language then we resort to what we call Google Democracy- that is; we Google all possible versions of the word and whichever comes up with the most Google search results wins.
EXAMPLE: INTILLS or INSTILS -??? BOTH ARE CORRECT! (who knew?!?)
Hypothetically, there is a (huge and gaping) weakness in this methodology- i.e. if about half of the people who write the word on the web spell it incorrectly, OR if the incorrect spelling returns MORE results than the correct spelling. Such a system could actually alter the way we spell words. (here's where I am once again reminded of the film Idiocracy, which most everyone agrees is a bad movie with a great premise, such a good premise in fact that it is somehow validated.)
Anyhow, on a similar vein (to Google democracy) I found this NY Times article: "What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer" Dan sent this morning was particularly interesting - if follows a similar line of thinking/method... basically.
posted by "Post-Google" by TAR ART RAT at 12:04 pm
2 Comments:
Doesn't your office have a dictionary? A good one [a good dictionary] will give you all the acceptable variations of the spelling of a word (assuming there are any). Fuck Google!
Actually, we do not have a dictionary as far as i know- and the discrepancies usually come from whether or not a word is one word or two... like longterm or long term or long-term, and when all our brains are fried we usually can't think clearly about such things...
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