[tt] CHE: Thinking About Truth, Lies, and the Power of Google

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Thinking About Truth, Lies, and the Power of Google 
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3315/thinking-about-truth-lies-and-the-power-of-google?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en 
September 12, 2008

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
Posted on Friday September 12, 2008

Comments

1. 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    #

2. 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    #

3. 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    #

4. 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    #

5. 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    #

6. 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    #

7. Thanks, Scott. I’m buying Amy Fry shares now before the market takes 
off.
— barbara fister    Sep 14, 02:50 PM    #

8. 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    #

9. And Nada’s data source for the assertion about what librarians hate 
is
?
— BP    Sep 15, 07:39 AM    #

10. 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    #

11. “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    #

12. 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    #