[Sigia-l] On Evangelism, and How it Affects Enterprise

[Listera]

"Andrew McNaughton" wrote:
> Another interesting observation.  Google doesn't report on the world.  It
> reports on trends in media content.

No, it detects patterns in media coverage and, based on that, takes the
reader directly to the source of the reports. Big difference.

> Google is unlikely to highlight the fact that America conducted a nuclear test
> today, because the media has not reported on it very widely, though google has
> found stories about the issue.

So, you are saying that Google is as likely/unlikely to provide the nuclear
test story as human editors allow it to get into the news stream. Zero
difference.

> It seems clear to me that this is an important story in light of the current
> discussion of weapons of mass destruction, but something like what google have
> built is not going to identify this as important.

No, it will if human editors (as you claim) would do so.

> This sort of critical judgement requires human intelligence and values, and
> will do for some time to come.

Google doesn't obviate "human intelligence and values". In fact, it
amplifies it by scanning a pool of "human intelligence and values" no single
(or comparable) human editorial staff could possibly cover. Instead of
centralized editorial control and its "critical judgment", it's distributed
judgment by 4,000. It's like the stock market. The sum is bigger than its
parts.
 
> [moved] This is a fundamental problem in automated clustering of documents.
> The clusters formed by most algorithms don't map well to the conceptual maps
> used by humans.  

Well, this remains to be seen. BTW, conceptual maps I used are not well
matched by those of, say, tabloids or infotainment shows, either.

> The problem doesn't lie in limited algorithms so much as limited information
> being available to the software.  The algorithms just don't know enough about
> the concepts that are represented.

Again, GoogleNews is not mimicking a *single* human editor, it's detecting
patterns by scanning thousands of them.

I think you need to rethink GoogleNews not as distinct news stories by
specific human beings, but as a fluid news stream that updates itself every
15 minutes based on network effects.

Best,

Ziya