Today, I wanted to bring to your attention a very interesting, Information Age and Information Technology story circulating within the media. It has had and will continue to have significant influence on our industry for years to come.
CNN.com – Racist Obama image shines light on Web searching
When a racist image of first lady Michelle Obama surfaced from the ugliest corners of the Internet last week to top Google’s image search results, the episode shined a spotlight on the mysterious workings of search engines.
Google placed an ad near the image, apologizing for its offensive nature. But the company resisted calls to scrub the image from its database, saying its role as a neutral tool for searching the Web means having to live with the results, whether it likes them or not.
The reason that I think that this story is such a significant technology meme is that it is fundamentally all about freedom of search as it concerns freedom of speech, capitalism vs, socialism, the expression of a corporate legal entity vs.an individual, and who will control the index of our lives. All of the concerns and considerations of censorship and book burning are also at play, too.
If you, as an Information Technology Professional, have not been following this developing story, I recommend that you consider it. I expect that there will be long-term ramifications no matter how this particular case concludes. There are obviously a number of very slippery ethical and moral slopes in play here and one ignorant or dumb step onto any of them could and would significantly influence the way that the Internet continues to develop.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for December 4, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin
Image Credit: faqs.org
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News Commentary: Freedom of Search?
Today, I wanted to bring to your attention a very interesting, Information Age and Information Technology story circulating within the media. It has had and will continue to have significant influence on our industry for years to come.
CNN.com – Racist Obama image shines light on Web searching
The reason that I think that this story is such a significant technology meme is that it is fundamentally all about freedom of search as it concerns freedom of speech, capitalism vs, socialism, the expression of a corporate legal entity vs.an individual, and who will control the index of our lives. All of the concerns and considerations of censorship and book burning are also at play, too.
If you, as an Information Technology Professional, have not been following this developing story, I recommend that you consider it. I expect that there will be long-term ramifications no matter how this particular case concludes. There are obviously a number of very slippery ethical and moral slopes in play here and one ignorant or dumb step onto any of them could and would significantly influence the way that the Internet continues to develop.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for December 4, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin
Image Credit: faqs.org
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
This entry was posted by Scott Coughlin on December 4, 2009 at 6:22 am, and is filed under Human Resources, Information Age, News Commentary, Privacy. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.