Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era | Daniel Levitin | Talks at Google
“Last time I was here, I said that I thought
that regular Google search–
I had just been told in the lunch
that I had before I came here last time that Google
was very proud of the fact that when they first started out–
well, when you first started out,
when Google was in a dorm room effectively–
and you searched Google in the early days,
you had to scroll down quite a ways
before you would find the thing you were really looking for.
And Google has been working tirelessly of course,
to make the thing you’re really looking
for the first hit on the list, so that you’re not
wasting time.
And there’s been a lot of discussion about how,
because Google knows your IP address, whether you’re signed
in or not, and it knows your search history,
it tends to tailor the results for you.
So if I were to search for something about climate change,
I might get a very different result
than you get, searching about climate change,
depending on the kinds of things we’ve clicked on in the past.
I might never get any of your results,
and you might never get any of mine.
And so I wonder what you all think
I’d be curious to know your feelings about how or whether
this has contributed to this echo chamber phenomenon
that we’ve been accused of living in,
this bubble phenomenon that we’re only hearing views
that support our own views.
And we’re not being exposed to what the great promise
of the internet was.
The great democratizing force was that for once and for all
we could have a free marketplace of ideas.
You could encounter any idea that was out there
and judge it for yourself.”