I have heard (and laughed at) theories of how computers/machines will take over and destroy the world! I have a much greater and more imminent fear regarding the abilities of online technologies to influence our world views.
Google is making headways in its profiling, your search results may be very different to be the same search query I make. This is great, personalised results based on our unique context. But what if Google gets it wrong? Or worse still what if the profile that Google thinks we fit best into starts to change our cognitive processes.
Let’s take an example, a student starts doing some research on guns in South Africa involving several searches on the topic, this in turns changes the Google profile of that person. Google could then serve that same individual with more results about guns and violence in other seemingly unrelated searches. Google news, Gmail, Adwords, Google blog and scholar search could all lead to Google serving that individual more results based on guns and violence in South Africa. Eventually that persons world view will start to narrow and may be changed based on the way Google serves the world to that person.
In the end the potential lies that extremists will become more extreme and our worlds will shrink. Scary, very scary.
Computers taking over the world – Image from www.wikus.co.za
