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So whenever I visit a school
and talk to students,
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I always ask them the same thing:
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Why do you Google?
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Why is Google the search engine
of choice for you?
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Strangely enough, I always get
the same three answers.
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One, "Because it works,"
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which is a great answer;
that's why I Google, too.
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Two, somebody will say,
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"I really don't know of any alternatives."
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It's not an equally great answer
and my reply to that is usually,
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"Try to Google the word 'search engine,'
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you may find a couple
of interesting alternatives."
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And last but not least, thirdly,
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inevitably, one student will raise
her or his hand and say,
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"With Google, I'm certain to always get
the best, unbiased search result."
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Certain to always get the best,
unbiased search result.
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Now, as a man of the humanities,
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albeit a digital humanities man,
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that just makes my skin curl,
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even if I, too, realize that that trust,
that idea of the unbiased search result
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is a cornerstone in our collective love
for and appreciation of Google.
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I will show you why that, philosophically,
is almost an impossibility.
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But let me first elaborate,
just a little bit, on a basic principle
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behind each search query
that we sometimes seem to forget.
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So whenever you set out
to Google something,
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start by asking yourself this:
"Am I looking for an isolated fact?"
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What is the capital of France?
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What are the building blocks
of a water molecule?
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Great -- Google away.
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There's not a group of scientists
who are this close to proving
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that it's actually London and H30.
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You don't see a big conspiracy
among those things.
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We agree, on a global scale,
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what the answers are
to these isolated facts.
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But if you complicate your question
just a little bit and ask something like,
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"Why is there
an Israeli-Palestine conflict?"
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You're not exactly looking
for a singular fact anymore,
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you're looking for knowledge,
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which is something way more
complicated and delicate.
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And to get to knowledge,
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you have to bring 10 or 20
or 100 facts to the table
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and acknowledge them and say,
"Yes, these are all true."
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But because of who I am,
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young or old, black or white,
gay or straight,
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I will value them differently.
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And I will say, "Yes, this is true,
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but this is more important
to me than that."
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And this is where it becomes interesting,
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because this is where we become human.
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This is when we start
to argue, to form society.
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And to really get somewhere,
we need to filter all our facts here --
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through friends and neighbors
and parents and children
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and coworkers and newspapers
and magazines,
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to finally be grounded in real knowledge,
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which is something that a search engine
is a poor help to achieve.
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So, I promised you an example
just to show you why it's so hard
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to get to the point of true, clean,
objective knowledge --
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as food for thought.
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I will conduct a couple of simple
queries, search queries.
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We'll start with "Michelle Obama,"
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the First Lady of the United States.
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And we'll click for pictures.
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It works really well, as you can see.
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It's a perfect search
result, more or less.
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It's just her in the picture,
not even the President.
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How does this work?
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Quite simple.
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Google uses a lot of smartness
to achieve this, but quite simply,
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they look at two things
more than anything.
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First, what does it say in the caption
under the picture on each website?
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Does it say "Michelle Obama"
under the picture?
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Pretty good indication
it's actually her on there.
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Second, Google looks at the picture file,
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the name of the file as such
uploaded to the website.
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Again, is it called "MichelleObama.jpeg"?
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Pretty good indication it's not
Clint Eastwood in the picture.
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So, you've got those two and you get
a search result like this -- almost.
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Now, in 2009, Michelle Obama
was the victim of a racist campaign,
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where people set out to insult her
through her search results.
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There was a picture distributed
widely over the Internet
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where her face was distorted
to look like a monkey.
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And that picture was published all over.
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And people published it
very, very purposefully,
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to get it up there in the search results.
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They made sure to write
"Michelle Obama" in the caption
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and they made sure to upload the picture
as "MichelleObama.jpeg" or the like.
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You get why -- to manipulate
the search result.
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And it worked, too.
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So when you picture-Googled
for "Michelle Obama" in 2009,
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that distorted monkey picture
showed up among the first results.
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Now, the results are self-cleansing,
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and that's sort of the beauty of it,
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because Google measures relevance
every hour every day.
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However, Google didn't settle
for that this time,
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they just thought, "That's racist
and it's a bad search result
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and we're going to go back
and clean that up manually.
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We are going to write
some code and fix it,"
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which they did.
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And I don't think anyone in this room
thinks that was a bad idea.
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Me, neither.
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But then, a couple of years go by,
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and the world's most-Googled Anders,
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Anders Behring Breivik,
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did what he did.
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This is July 22 in 2011,
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and a terrible day in Norwegian history.
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This man, a terrorist, blew up
a couple of government buildings
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walking distance from where we are
right now in Oslo, Norway
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and then he traveled
to the island of Utøya
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and shot and killed a group of kids.
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Almost 80 people died that day.
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And a lot of people would describe
this act of terror as two steps,
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that he did two things: he blew up
the buildings and he shot those kids.
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It's not true.
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It was three steps.
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He blew up those buildings,
he shot those kids,
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and he sat down and waited
for the world to Google him.
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And he prepared
all three steps equally well.
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And if there was somebody
who immediately understood this,
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it was a Swedish web developer,
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a search engine optimization expert
in Stockholm, named Nikke Lindqvist.
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He's also a very political guy
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and he was right out there
in social media, on his blog and Facebook.
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And he told everybody,
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"If there's something that
this guy wants right now,
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it's to control the image of himself.
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Let's see if we can distort that.
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Let's see if we, in the civilized world,
can protest against what he did
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through insulting him
in his search results."
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And how?
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He told all of his readers the following,
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"Go out there on the Internet,
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find pictures of dog poop on sidewalks --
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find pictures of dog poop on sidewalks --
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publish them in your feeds,
on your websites, on your blogs.
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Make sure to write the terrorist's
name in the caption,
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make sure to name
the picture file "Breivik.jpeg."
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Let's teach Google that that's
the face of the terrorist."
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And it worked.
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Two years after that campaign
against Michelle Obama,
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this manipulation campaign
against Anders Behring Breivik worked.
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If you picture-Googled for him weeks after
the July 22 events from Sweden,
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you'd see that picture of dog poop
high up in the search results,
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as a little protest.
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Strangely enough, Google
didn't intervene this time.
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They did not step in and manually
clean those search results up.
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So the million-dollar question is:
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is there anything different
between these two happenings here?
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Is there anything different between
what happened to Michelle Obama
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and what happened
to Anders Behring Breivik?
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Of course not.
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It's the exact same thing,
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yet Google intervened in one case
and not in the other.
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Why?
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Because Michelle Obama
is an honorable person, that's why,
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and Anders Behring Breivik
is a despicable person.
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See what happens there?
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An evaluation of a person takes place
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and there's only one
power-player in the world
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with the authority to say who's who.
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"We like you, we dislike you.
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We believe in you,
we don't believe in you.
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You're right, you're wrong.
You're true, you're false.
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You're Obama, and you're Breivik."
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That's power if I ever saw it.
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So I'm asking you to remember
that behind every algorithm
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is always a person,
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a person with a set of personal beliefs
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that no code can ever
completely eradicate.
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And my message goes
out not only to Google,
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but to all believers in the faith
of code around the world.
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You need to identify
your own personal bias.
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You need to understand that you are human
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and take responsibility accordingly.
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And I say this because I believe
we've reached a point in time
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when it's absolutely imperative
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that we tie those bonds
together again, tighter:
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the humanities and the technology.
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Tighter than ever.
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And, if nothing else, to remind us
that that wonderfully seductive idea
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of the unbiased, clean search result
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is, and is likely to remain, a myth.
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Thank you for your time.
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(Applause)