Week Six

I’m not going to lie, this book has been hard for me to get through so far, and we’re only one chapter in.

I think it’s interesting that the United Nations launched a study into search engines. I always think of the U.N. as some international peace group that talks about the environments and crisis aid, but I know there’s a lot more that they do, and I guess this is one of those things. Noble says that what she finds troubling is “that the campaign also reinforces the idea that it is not the search engine that is the problem, but, rather, the users of search of search engines who are.” She obviously doesn’t think that’s true, and neither do I. I don’t know of anyone that searches any of those predictive search results that she talks about and pictures in the book.

In my DTC 206 (Digital Inclusion) class, we recently talked about how content for minorities may be harder to find because these creators aren’t usually able to keep up with the big companies when it comes to paying for their content to be seen first and most often. Noble asks a question that I think pretty well encapsulates that discussion: “If the majority rules in search engine results, then how might those who are in the minority ever be able to influence or control how they are represented in a search engine?” I don’t think that many black women are searching those questions that are on the cover of the book and also in the chapter, so how are they supposed to communicate how they feel and want to be represented if these are the kinds of things that are thought to be so ‘popular’ and mainstream?

One quote from the chapter that really stuck out to me was this: “representations of women are ranked on a search engine page in ways that underscore women’s historical and contemporary lack of status in society” and I really liked that. In general, we’ve come a along way in the journey to gender equality, but there’s still so many little things like search engine predictions that show how much work we really have left to do, and how technology may be making these things worse, instead of better. People don’t always use technology in positive ways like they should.