Search Engines – A social perspective

Sipping my usual morning cup of coffee, I just began to realize how much I love the cup coffee I dirnk everyday morning. I was just wondering is it any good for my health. I know I am not addicted to it. But is it really good?

I wanted to find it out and used one of the most frequently accessed Information store, the web. I used one of the search engines to search for the information. When I typed in "Coffee is good for health" I got various links which spoke about what is good about drinking coffee. However when I type "Coffee is bad for health" I got the same number of links which talked about dangerous effects of coffee to our body. At the end of the whole thing I just decided against to research more about this topic.

This gave entirely a new thought about the social impact a search engine might have. None of algorithms as we know are published to us and we do not know what is real logic on how they retrieve and show us the links. Based on the searches I have done in the past I had come to the conclusion that a search engine speaks to your perception. If I think coffee is good I will search for "Coffee is good" which way I would most probably get the links which talk about the good qualities of coffee when I think coffee is bad for health I would search for "Coffee is bad" and the results I would get links which talk about the bad qualities of coffee. Most often than not I would not search for different perceptions and find the answer. The search engine keeps me happy as it most often than not reassures my perception by giving me results which match the readers perception.

I just remembered a story from my childhood. Akbar (the famous Mughal King) and Birbal (His wise minister) were having lunch together. The cook had prepared a dish with egg plant (Brinjal) which Akbar liked a lot. He turned to Birbal and said "Egg plant is very tasty. I think this vegetable is the best one". Birbal immediately said "Yes your Majesty. Egg plant is the best of all vegetables. That is the reason nature has added a crown on its head".  As the king liked it a lot the cook included egg plant in all the dishes he made from then on. As days passed by the king was fed up with this egg plant. He said to Birbal "I am fed up with having egg plant in all the dishes. I feel this should be the worst of all vegetables". Birbal immediately replied "Yes your Majesty. Egg plant is the worst of all vegetables. That is the reason nature has nailed its head".

The story ends with the king as usual praising the wit of his wise minister. I relate search engine to Birbal. They provide links which talk the readers perception than providing links which talk about the right facts. This phenomenon may provide interesting effects on the society. In the absence of a search engine it is difficult for one to find the source of information, if one finds a source of information like a course from a college would teach the true facts, however by reading from any links may try to mislead people at some instances. But this is offshooted by the power of information access the web gives us. It is left to the readers discretion to learn the right facts. There are many contenders to this who claim this should not happen and it should be the responsibility of the search engine to provide the right facts while there are other people who wants to let it to the readers discretion.

I personally don’t have any opinion that is against search engines. I feel the search engines would remain to do the same until we could develop a search engine algorithm which removes the perception from the users search string and brings the real and true facts to the user. But till then lets hope and believe that the readers are able to derive the right information they get access to 🙂