WHAT. . . Am I Going to Write about Tonight?

Awhile back, just for kicks, I went on to Google and typed the opening words to questions--who, what, when, where, why, and how--into the search bar.  I wanted to see what Google's top "suggestion" to complete the question would be.  Tonight, feeling at a loss for a post topic, I did this again.

As was the case last time, typing "Why" prompted Google to suggest "is the sky blue?"  This time around, "What" generated--unsurprisingly--"does the fox say?"  And "Who" led to "should I start?"--a nod to the ubiquity of fantasy football leagues.

I was intrigued, though, by the suggestions for "Where," "When," and "Who":

Where am I?
When is my birthday?
How old am I?

I can only conclude that Google users have lately suffered an inordinate amount of head trauma.

Questionable Results

As anyone who has ever googled knows, when you Google something, the search engine attempts to figure out what you want even before you finish typing in the search bar.  Presumably, the results Google suggests are based on the popularity of search terms; thus, if you type in the letter 'a,' Google promptly suggests "Amazon" (and no doubt receives a comparatively hefty royalty on anything purchased after a subsequent click).

Since Google is the go-to source for the answers to any question one could think of, I was curious to see what popular questions people were asking.  I typed each of the six "reporter's questions"--who, what where, when, how, and why--into the search bar.  Following are the "results," i.e., the first complete "question" that popped up after I typed the question-word and hit the space bar:

Who framed Roger Rabbit?

What is my IP?

Where is Chuck Norris?

When is Mother's Day?  (NOTE: The first result that actually came up was "When I was your man," the title of a Bruno Mars' song.)

How to tie a tie.  (NOTE: The top result was actually "How I Met Your Mother," which I assumed was a reference to the TV show, until I clicked and found a truly disturbing story about Sergey Brin and MOS, which I refuse to share here.)

Why is the sky blue?

So what can we conclude from this list?  Well, a number of people seem concerned about technical issues (What is my IP?).  A number of others are probably 12 years old (the ones who want to know why the sky is blue and how to tie a tie--perhaps to wear when they visit Mom on Mother's Day--which we helpfully learn was May 11th--and why is THAT still the most popular "When" question, eight months after the fact?).

I have no idea why the number-one "Who" question is a reference to a twenty-five-year-old movie, nor why people fret over the whereabouts of Chuck Norris, but the ultimate takeaway from this experiment is that the interwebs remain a strange, strange place, only slightly redeemed by the fact that the second most popular "Why" question is the eminently sensible, "Why do cats purr?"

The Lazy Scholar's Friend (and I Don't Mean Wikipedia)

Writer Evgeny Morozov has a problem with autocomplete, the feature of Google and other sites that utilizes an algorithm to "guess" what you're looking for before you finish typing, and then fills in the rest of the word(s) for you.  In today's Times, Morozov specifically laments the "prudishness" of Google's algorithm, which refuses, for example, to autocomplete such potentially controversial terms as "Lolita" or "Swastika." (I must say though, I'm intrigued by the fact that the censoring mechanism apparently looks not only for pornography but also for intolerance.  Not sure whether this is good or bad, but it is intriguing.)

I, too, have a problem with autocomplete, not so much because of its selectivity as because of other shortcomings.  First, there are unintended consequences, such as the accidental e-mail (alluded to in today's column by Frank Bruni).  Fans of "The Newsroom" will recall MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) e-mailing Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) about her intention to come clean about secrets from their past, only to discover that--thanks to autocomplete--she has accidentally sent this e-mail to approximately 100,000 people.  By the way, that's also EXACTLY how WOS discovered my secret crush on Janeane Garofalo. (But I SWEAR it's only because it's fun to say "Garofalo"!)

The other problem I have with autocomplete is that it encourages laziness.  Maybe it's just because I'm a fairly fast typist, but generally I can finish typing whatever word or words I want to search for in about the same amount of time as it takes autocomplete to make suggestions.  For example, say I want to Google the President.  Autocomplete fills in "Obama" as soon as one types the letters "Ob."  But by the time "Obama" appears in the pull-down list, I've already struck the "a" and am well on my way to "m."  And even if you're not that quick, how lazy do you have to be to consider typing three extra letters onerous?  If it's worth searching for, it's worth typing.  Let your fingers do the Googling!

Mission Accomplished!

Wow!  You guys rock!  Not 24 hours after I exhorted you to Google-bomb "The Solipsist," this blog has shot all the way up to number 8!  And that pretender "Solipsist" has plummeted all the way down to 11!  The worm has turned!

If power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, boy, I am practically a powdered-rhinoceros-horn!  Now I know how Hitler must have felt--without quite so much anti-Semitism.  What else can I say, but thanks to all you little people.  I truly deserve this.

Let's "Santorum" the Solipsist

So to speak.

Maybe I should rephrase that.  Or at least explain.

Back when Rick Santorum was just a mild-mannered Pennsylvania senator, going around comparing homosexuality to "man-on-dog" action, syndicated columnist Dan Savage played a delightful prank on the current semi-front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.  He created a website that "redefined" the word "Santorum" from "right-wing jerk" (or whatever it had been) to "the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is often the by-product of anal sex."  Savage then exhorted all his readers to visit this site, over and over, until it became the top Google "hit" for the senator's surname.  And it worked!  Prior to this election cycle (and, indeed, well into it), if you Googled "Santorum," Savage's website would be the number-one result.  If Santorum's primary run has no other effect, the fact that his own actual website is now the number-one Google result for his name should probably be considered a mark of great success.

I think it's time the Solipsist enjoyed a Santorum-like surge.

Again, let me rephrase.

I just checked out the results for "The Solipsist" on Google, and was shocked--shocked!--to find the site you now hold in your hands (or whatever) languishing at number 11!  What are you people doing?  Now, granted, I come in just ahead of Sylvia Plath's "Soliloquy of the Solipsist"--DON'T CLICK THAT LINK!  I'M HANGING BY A THREAD HERE! But I'm way behind "The Solipsist" by Troy Jollimore, and Wikipedia, and "Soliloquy of the Solipsist" by Sylvia Plath--wait, what?  OK, never mind.  Adding insult to injury, I am trailing ANOTHER site--on blogspot--that has the audacity to call itself "The Solipsist"!!!

This nakedly aggressive being of me cannot stand!  I am calling on all loyal members of Solipsist Nation to start Google-bombing at will!  I may never overtake Wikipedia or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--or even Fredric Brown (Frederic Brown?).  But I WILL overtake this solipsistic pretender!

I'm not exactly sure how the technological foofaraw works, but I think the main idea is that you should go to Google, type in "The Solipsist," and then access this site through the Google link--being very careful not to click accidentally on any other links.  Believe me, they're not worth your effort.  In no time, we should crack the solipsistic top ten.

And, if it'll help, I can make some offensive remarks about homosexuality: First, lesbianism does not exist; all those so-called lesbians are just ladies who haven't met me.  And guy-on-guy sex is like a Rick Santorum speech: sloppy as hell and often painful if you're on the receiving end.

Good night, everybody!  Start clicking!

Coolest Thing EVER

Nobody talked much about solipsists before the late-19th century. OK, presumably we were talking about ourselves, but we didn't get much play in the wider world. The highwater mark of solipsism's literary popularity apparently came in 1996: In that year, about 1/20,000 of one percent of the words used in books was "solipsism." Why this sudden popularity? Could it have something to do with America's highly popular, solipsistic commander-in-chief? (OK, Clinton was technically more of a narcissist, but there's a definite relationship?) And what explains the fact that, while "solipsism" trended up, "solipsist" trended down? A sign of people's preference for abstraction over individuals?

We can muse upon these questions thanks to Google's new "Books Ngram Viewer." Basically, this tool allows you to search through thousands upon thousands of digitized texts to see how often words or short phrases appear. It's a sort of concordance for the electronic age. ("Concordance," incidentally, has had a sort of up-and-down history. Its usage spikes around 1670 and then again about a hundred years later, before dipping into a trough from which it arose again around 1970. It had maintained its status since then--no stopping "concordance" now.)

Another fun fact: a little under 5% of the words used in Google's sample are the word "the." If we read this correctly, this means that if one reads twenty words, there's a good chance that one of those words is "the." Also, this 5% total (which is pretty huge if you think about it) is down from a high of about 6% in the mid-19th century. Why has "the" fallen into disfavor over the last 150 years? And why has the fall-off been less drastic in British books than in American? (Yup, you can look at that, too.)

We prefer Pepsi to Coke, but the latter is about 15 times more common than the former. And since 1977, when "Star Wars" hit theaters, the movie has been a steady topic--or, maybe not: The phrase reached its zenith in the late 1980s, when it occurs once every million words or so, but we suspect that may have something to do with President Reagan's plans for missile defense. As of 2008, though, the phrase was only slightly more common than "Star Trek"--and the latter doesn't even have geopolitical implications. (Also, "Star Wars" is more popular than "Star Trek" in French literature, but the numbers are reversed for Germans. Discuss.)

Seek,and Ye Shall F

Virginia Heffernan writes "The Medium," a weekly media and technology column for The New York Times Magazine. Awhile back, she did a column about Google, specifically about the algorithm the search engine uses to "guess" what you may be looking for when you begin typing in the search box. She went through the alphabet, one letter at a time, and reported on what Google's "guess" was for each one. When she typed in 'a,' the search engine returned, perhaps unsurprisingly, Amazon.com; 'z' brought back Zillow.com.

Presumably, the algorithm utilizes data compiled by gazillions of user searches to extrapolate what it thinks one is most likely to type in next. We assume this program also takes into account the physical location of the searcher. Thus, when Your-Not-So-Humble-Correspondent just now typed in 'b,' he retrieved the website for BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit, the public transportation agency of the San Francisco Bay Area.

A friend of ours once told us that good writers are original, and great writers steal. In that spirit, then, we got to wondering what would happen if we typed the standard journalistic questions-- who, what, when, why, where, and how--into Google's magic box. Herewith, the results:

WHO won American Idol?
WHAT is my ip address?
WHEN in Rome (2010) IMDB.com.
WHERE the Wild Things Are (2009) IMDB.com.
WHY is the sky blue?
HOW I Met Your Mother?

So, if we may draw a hasty conclusion, Google thinks Americans are a bunch of entertainment obsessed geeky kindergartners. Sounds about right.