Essay – How search engines are making us more racist Search engines like Google or similar are something we use virtually every day, in fact, we search Google 3.5 billion times every day. The world we live in, we receive more information from search engines online than from teachers or books. Search engines find the best answers for your search by using algorithms that decide what information is being brought to you. The platform is made by a small group of people — that have limited knowledge about the society — for the majority in the society, but, is the platform we get the information delivered on neutral and unbiased or does the developer bias reflect on the search result? In the society we live in, search engines are becoming a bigger …show more content…
Google’s search algorithms have for numerous years been accused of being slightly racist, in the way the information is delivered to the user and what information that is delivered. The algorithms are developed by people and every person has an opinion on something and that may reflect on the results we get from searching the web. It’s also important to note that books are still very useful for gathering information and since the new generation is used to use Google for seeking knowledge it will forget the even book …show more content…
“They’re designing technologies for society, and they know nothing about society.”. As Noble says they don’t know anything about the society, they can only generalize from the knowledge they know. Noble tested this, and one of the tests she searched the word ‘beautiful’ and images of white women in bikinis or lingerie were the images that dominated the search result. Looking at Google’s AdWords and how that affects the search is very interesting when searching for electronic products, it shows up as you would expect; in a column alongside or on top of the search and it says ‘sponsored’ above it. The highest bidder on the keyword shows up. But when searching on “Asian girls” there is two advertisements showing up and it says with small insufficient symbol before the link saying “Ad”, both of those sites were dating sites, and the rest of the search that is supposed to be neutral and unbiased shows otherwise; majority of the sites has something related to dating, referring to Asians girls as objects and the sites or forums seemed stereotypical. An example of Google’s algorithms misleading
“…Everybody jumped on him, and beat him senseless… Everybody was hitting him or kicking him. One guy was kicking at his spine. Another guy was hitting him on the side of his face… he was unconscious. He was bleeding. Everybody had blood on their forearms. We ran back up the hill laughing… He should have died… He lost so much blood he turned white. He got what he deserved…” (Ridgeway 167). The skinheads who were beating this man up had no reason to do so except for the fact that he was Mexican. Racism in this day and age is still as big of a problem as it was in the past, and as long as hate groups are still around to promote violence, society is never going to grow to love one another.
People are not one dimensional. Everyone has multiple identities that when combined, form who we are. The way these identities intersect shape our realities, impact how we experience life, and influence the way we are treated by others within society. The Intersecting Axes of Privilege, Domination, and Oppression diagram addresses multiple identities such as gender, sex, race, age, class, sexual orientation, etc. The identities examined in the diagram visualize that people are more likely to have privilege or face oppression depending on their classification within a specific identity. Due to intersectionality, many experience both privilege and oppression simultaneously. The four oppressive systems that have impacted my life in various ways are race, sex, heritage, and language bias.
While browsing through articles on the internet, I came across many related to the topic of racism. I am beginning to feel as if I am surrounded by stories of racism. From the KKK’s aggressive campaign against immigrants, to the police violence against black people in cites throughout our nation, racism and discrimination continue to be problems. One story stood out to me and continues to make me uncomfortable. Malachi Wilson, a five year-old boy, could not attend his first day of kindergarten in Seminole, Texas. What could he have done to warrant the principal’s rejection? His hair was simply too long.
In Nathan McCall’s “Makes Me Wanna Holler,” he describes the difficulties he must face as a young black boy experiencing the slow, never-ending process of the integration of blacks and whites. Through this process, his autobiography serves as an excellent example of my theory on the formation and definition of racial identity; a theory which is based upon a combination of the claims which Stuart Hall and George Lipsitz present in their essays regarding racial identity. Therefore the definition I have concocted is one in which racial identity consists of an unstable historical process through which one comes to know themselves in relation to an outside group. In this paper I will present Hall and Lipsitz’s arguments, describing how they confirm and support one another, leading to my theory concerning racial identity. I will then show how this theory is clearly exemplified in the story of McCall’s childhood.
Mankind hates mankind. Humans are innately afraid of change and difference. This could’ve possibly stemmed from an instinct from caveman times where anything different was deadly. In today’s age, we often treat people who are diverse whether it be age, gender, or race, differently. We treat other human beings as hostile because they are different, and when I think about that I wonder why can’t we be friends.
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid." July/August 2008. The Alantic Magazine. 20 February 2012 .
Racism is a topic that several do not like to discuss due many different scenarios. People, cultures, and beliefs have been torture¬d from past events. Individuals, young and old, within today’s society have experienced racism in some shape or form. The subject of racism is something that people view differently. There are some who view it as okay, and those who are against it. The beginning of racism began during the time of the ancient civilizations which lead to events that caused short term effects such as the depression of those hurt by the September 11, 2001 attacks, and long term effects like Jewish mistreatment. The explanation of while different events happened are hard to come about, although an idea of the reasoning comes down to scientific racism.
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid." TheAtlantic.com. The Atlantic Magazine, July/August 2008. Web. 18 February 2012.
In today’s fast paced technology, search engines have become vastly popular use for people’s daily routines. A search engine is an information retrieval system that allows someone to search the...
The two companies that created these search engines have billions of dollars and numerous other resources at their disposal available for the research, the development and the innovation of their products or services. But even if you have all the funds in the world at your fingertips, if you have a bad brand image in the consumers eyes your brand will have extreme difficulty inserting itself in the market. So how does the public perceive these brands?
Google is the largest search engine across the globe, which has significantly transformed the use of the Internet as an information source. The influence of Google in Internet use as information source is evident in the fact that by June 2010, it accounted for more than 70 percent of total Internet searches in America. In addition to its success and profitability in the global market, Google is renowned as a highly ethical company as demonstrated in its corporate philosophy features. However, the firm’s behavior during the launch of its China-based search engine in 2006 generated huge skepticism from the United States government and several human rights organizations (Baker & Tang, p.2). Since the launch of Google’s Chinese search engine, the company complied with China’s censorship regulations by deciding to filter out terms that are considered politically sensitive. This decision attracted criticism from political leaders and human rights activists who accused Google of betraying its adopted ethical standards by ignoring the essence of freedom of expression and information access. As a result, Google faced a dilemma involving the clash between law and ethics. In the subsequent years, Google reacted to the dilemma by changing its rhetoric strategies in efforts to respond to the changing needs.
Search engines are not very complex in the way that they work. Each search engine sends out spiders to bots into web space going from link to link identifying all pages that it can. After the spiders get to a web page they generally index all the words on that page that are publicly available pages at the site. They then store this information into their databases and when you run a search it matches they key words you searched with the words on the page that the spider indexed. However when you are searching the web using a search engine, you are not searching the entire web as it is presently. You are looking at what the spiders indexed in the past.
We as human beings enjoy finding the easy way to do things. Instead of looking through hundred of pages in books for information, you can simply type your question into Google and get your answer in seconds. The internet 's search engines may not find the answer to an exact question instantly, but it will provide millions of different websites that will have information on the topic. Some people say that’s making us more lazy, we look at three different websites and if we can’t find it we
The Internet has made access to information easier. Information is stored efficiently and organized on the Internet. For example, instead of going to our local library, we can use Internet search engines. Simply by doing a search, we get thousands of results. The search engines use a ranking system to help us retrieve the most pertinent results in top order. Just a simple click and we have our information. Therefore, we can learn about anything, immediately. In a matter of moments, we can become an expert.