Our Data Sources: In the Information Age, What Are We Really Learning?

While many people understand how wondrous and vast the Internet is and appreciate the "Information Age", those same people may not be learning in the manner expected by those that envisioned an information utopia. Wireless communication linking the minds of others, virtual omniscience by every individual, and a loss of personalization and privacy are some of the thoughts that come to mind when thinking of the future, but the technologically elite society of the past saw the Internet blossoming into something remarkable that was not always so far fetched but which is still vastly different from what we see today.

Google, Wikipedia, Babelfish, and numerous other sites exist to store and search for the information we seek. If we wanted to know who shot President Lincoln or theories for various physical properties of our existence, we can simply search on the Internet and find more than we could ever individually learn about such subjects. Instead, though, we often seek for other topics of interest. We search for information on the gossip of the latest celebrities, the hottest toys for Christmas, video game reviews, and news headlines for entertainment rather than information. So, in this "Information Age", what is the information we are gathering?

The Search Results

So, let us take a look at Google Zeitgeist. You can find the results for this month, here.

Well, as you can see, there are probably topics related to sports, video games, personal financial matters, celebrities, current events in the news, and perhaps some vacation ideas and commercial interests. However, it is unlikely that such terms as "telomeres", "carcinoma", "neural networks", "methyltransferase gene results", "robotic engineering", "Newton", or even "learning calculus" will be the top candidates for searches. And even if such a result was found on the list as one of the top searches, it is quite apparent that "Newton" would be more likely referring to a toy or product than a person.