Search

Ah the Search revolution! I often wonder whether the search results reflect the collective consciousness in the world, with respect to the topic, and/or different pockets of collective consciousness that may be mutually orthogonal.

Since the internet is a conglomeration of resources about various topics authored by various people, if you were to pick a topic and analyze the search results, it could probably give you a fairly good idea of :
(a) The top few things people associate with the topic
(b) The different points of view people have about the topic and....
(c) Possibly some surprising things you would have never expected to find!

It's interesting sometimes to put in random topics and see what comes back, just for fun, even when you are not in pursuit of information for a specific topic. So let's look at a few..., what say? :)

"Morals": This is a very subjective topic. Would it give me discussion forums where people discussed their ideas of morals? Would it give me political articles, that have a high keyword frequency due to the sheer lack of morals in politics? :) Would it give me philosophy papers? Well, the very first hit was... guesses anybody? Wikipedia of course. Now the second one was interesting- "Questionnaire! Test your morality!" The next few were about Christian morals. Interesting? Naaaah... And then came something that made sense (other than the Wikipedia one of course) and that was "Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, by Immanuel Kant". On the whole, not bad. If I were searching for this topic out of genuine quest for some information, I would probably not be disappointed with the first two result pages. Any surprises here? Not really, all hits seem reasonable enough...

"Hourglass figure" : First page, all good hits, nothing that stood out and is worth mentioning. Second page: still good... "Do You Pursue an Hourglass Figure?", "Clothes that flatter hourglass figures" etc.. and here's the surprise....the last hit on this page: "Workshops: The Hourglass Figure for Transgendered Men"!

"Women Thirties" : Interesting huh?! :) The second hit and the one that caught my eye first was "Women Thirties 30s Lifestyle Calcium Supplementation Bone Loss". Darn! This sounds sad! The one after that: "Advancing Women - Thirties Living". I went to this link and it had the following:

"At Advancing Women, we have a special interest in women who are in their late 20's to early 40's. If you are in this age group you may be challenged by multiple factors:

• choices about career and motherhood
• balancing your personal and professional identities
• learning more about your true life values and priorities
• ambition - wanting to have recognition and success quickly
• struggling to balance work and home and still take care of yourself
• lack of clarity about the life choices that are best for you
• wanting to leave a traditional job and move into a career that is more in sync with your true values and your lifestyle "

Darn! Sad again, but pretty much summarizes the thoughts in women I know who are between their late twenties and early forties, as it mentions.

And....... what's the surprise? The very first hit: "Go Ask Alice!: Increased sex drive for women in their thirties?" :)