September 12, 2008
Thinking About Truth, Lies, and the Power of Google
Amy Fry, a San Diego librarian, has a thoughtful little post on ACRLog called “Information Is Power — Even When It’s Wrong.” It’s basically a dissection of the United Airlines stock-value dive that occurred after a reporter from Income Securities Advisors posted erroneous information that he had gotten from a Google search.
For the average librarian, the event provides a series of lessons: that “proper metadata is important” or that “sometimes aggregators are misleading.”
But a big lesson for Ms. Fry: “Google is more powerful than we even realized.”
“If any one of you has been underestimating the role of Google in the information food chain, STOP,” she writes. “As more and more information is accessed through and archived by private companies …, librarians must take on greater responsibilities as watchdogs for the public interest. Even if our roles are changing, our mission must not.”
Now, could the headline of her item be applied to the current presidential race? People have already remarked on the power of the Internet in the current race — but to what end? —Scott Carlson
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There is more to that “power.” Google and other search engines could keep records of every search you make and then be prepared to use it to market to you or to destroy your reputation. All they need do is link you to the search. If you are logged into gmail, and you do the search..you are linked. Maybe you are doing a project for class on sexual behavior in snails. Suddenly, 30 yrs later you are accused of surfing the web for sex having made 9000 searches related to sex. I can create other scenarios. This could have incredible potential to control elections of officials through destroying their reputation.
— Malcolm McCallum Sep 12, 04:22 PM #
Schools of information and library science are doing well to prepare librarians as teachers and analysts: both finding information AND vetting it.
Assessment of information quality can have huge risk-management benefits. The apparently brief selection process for VP candidate is a case in point: McCain may not Google much, but what we have learned of his research methods makes him look like a Googler: know a little, click a little, presume a lot. The jury is still out on the long-term effects of his approach to information quality.
Online information is valuable to the degree that users are trained to question it, and it’s good to see librarians eager to take the front line in that effort.
— Paul Erb Sep 12, 04:32 PM #
Anyone who regularly uses the Internet (where news stories often appear with incorrect dates and even, gasp, incorrect data) should know to double- or quintuple-check all information they find there before using it to make a critical decision. Some lazy or ignorant financial journalist didn’t do that in this case, and a herd of investors just plunged ahead. “Wheee!! OK, done — what is your next instruction?”
It’s bad enough that this comedy of errors led to a dive in stock prices. But now we have to listen to jejune philosophizing by librarians and journalists, no doubt smoking air cigarettes.
Here’s an undated news flash, candidates: If you drive your car into a lake on a bright, sunny day because Google Maps gave you incorrect directions, don’t blame anyone but yourself. The philosophy of geography had nothing to do with it.
— S. Britchky Sep 12, 05:40 PM #
Vetting of information is a business that can challenge Google. Yup, Google has failed in information vetting. It never occured to Google that such is critical and paramount to its survival. Dead baby Dead, Google.
— Jasmint Monet Sep 13, 11:58 AM #
The actual author of the piece is Amy Fry; she was a guest blogger at ACRLog, but since I posted it, it appeared with my byline. (Oh no! The Internets have lied!)
As for “jejeune” librarians – there’s an excellent recap in The New York Times today that spells it out. Here’s what happened: for whatever peculiar reason, an old news story popped up as a “most popular” story in a local paper. It was gathered up by Google News and appeared to be a current story – however many “minutes ago” it got harvested. Someone who looks for news stories that may interest investors grabbed it and fed it to an aggregator. Automated algorithms picked it up and triggered sell orders. Nobody read the story, but within less than 15 minutes a billion dollars worth of stocks vanished.
Nobody read the story.
Got that?
We’re not talking about “gee whiz! News flash: You need to be careful when you use the Internet!” We’re talking about the power of an information system built on search technology that triggers decisions without any human intervention or critical analysis. Is this such common knowledge nobody should bother mentioning it?
Thinking through the implications of information systems is what librarians should do. Sorry if it pains you to hear about it from us jejuene types.
— barbara fister Sep 14, 10:10 AM #
We changed “Fister” to “Fry” above. Apparently, we did not read closely enough. I hope no one’s stocks went in the toilet as a result.
— Scott Carlson Sep 14, 02:39 PM #
Thanks, Scott. I’m buying Amy Fry shares now before the market takes off.
— barbara fister Sep 14, 02:50 PM #
Librarians — oops, excuse me, I mean “information technologists” — hate Google. Guess why. (Hint: Fry’s article fails to disclose.)
— Nada Sep 14, 05:39 PM #
And Nada’s data source for the assertion about what librarians hate is…?
— BP Sep 15, 07:39 AM #
Librarians do not hate Google. Google is not the problem. The problem is poorly designed software making automatic buy sell decisions and financial analysts and a journalist too lazy to verify a story. Blaming Google for poor software design of buy sell systems and for poor judgment on the part of human beings is silly and hides the real problem. Complex systems need human intervention. Human beings need to use critical thinking skills.
— Bill Drew Sep 15, 08:10 AM #
“Indiscriminate information consumption is to the Second Dark Ages what illiteracy was to the First”. © 2008, David Gansz
— Haile Selassie Sep 15, 08:18 AM #
I am concerned that people are trying to set up librarians as the arbiters of truth or falsehood, and this is not what libraries are all about. There are many, many falsehoods in libraries—there are many things that I violently disagree with in my own library—but we do not decide to add something to the collection or not simply because we believe it is “true” or “false,” and we do not “protect” our users from “incorrect information.” Users are supposed to make these decisions themselves.
Perhaps in the future, librarians will become the watchdogs of “correct” information, but the idea frightens me. In our code of ethics, it says: “We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources.”
I realize that people would prefer to go to a font of knowledge to discover truth or falsehood instead of taking on the responsibility themselves, but expecting librarians to do this for everyone is frightening and goes beyond our responsibilities.
— J. Weinheimer Sep 15, 08:34 AM #
This example is not a good reason to fear the power of Google. Google’s job is finding pages that match your search terms, not fact-checking.
This is, however, yet another example in a long line of examples of why we should be skeptical of the media.
Don’t believe everything you read!
— Chris Herdt Sep 15, 11:37 AM #