You live in a tiny bubble inside Google: this is how you segment your searches

Neuroscientist David Eagleman says that the brain, and therefore us, is "locked in a vault in silence and darkness in the skull." As social animals, we think that the isolation of our own society is palliated with interactions.But what if the network of networks, which apparently connects us and frees us from our personal prejudices, were limiting us?

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Internet is a Wonderful place, there is no doubt.But search engines, which indexed and organized the content to make it accessible, can build around us an ideological cage from which to escape is difficult.With each search we add one more bar to our bubble and we segment the information we will want to get in the future.The next experiment will surprise you.

Meet with your friends and look for the same term

Long ago I did the innocent experiment: I asked a group of close friends to look for the word "technology" in their terminals.Although many achieved similar results, the news that appeared was not the same.Most opened the search engine with the definition of technology, although others appeared ads.A few, news, and varied according to the user.

You live in a tiny bubble inside Google: this is how you segment your searches

"Technology" may be a very neutral term, but try the experiment with other words.Try other interesting and more polarized examples, such as "party." And with people like coworkers, family or friends to see ideological differences between groups .

Searching for this term, people very freaks of a sport will probably locate the next meeting of their team.Whoever follows the policy will get the latest news from the party to which they are affiliated.In addition, our team or political party could appear ahead of the rest.

If you wonder how Google knows your tastes, hobbies or ideology, keep in mind that, like Facebook, it is dedicated to knowing.Every time you do a search, learn that it moves you, and reflects it.Yes, weave a curious resonance mechanism around you.

The resonance mechanism: is it the fault of the algorithms?

Google's results are part of a complex undisclosed algorithm with hundreds of parameters.We know that previous searches, as well as the websites that you regularly consult, influence .But to understand the mechanism of Google resonance let's use a simpler scheme.Let's listen to music.

Let's say we love the classic and that we listen to it without stopping on YouTube.Thanks to the automatic player, when one piece finishes, another begins.If we don't like it, just press the arrow.This network learns, based on our searches and minutes of belonging to a track, which we like.

As a result, as soon as you access YouTube we will obtain in the "Recommended" section those songs that could be pleasant for us.The more hours we dedicate, the better the algorithm refines your response.It is a type of search that rewards content similar to that we have already consumed .

You live in a tiny bubble inside Google: this is how you segment your searches

If we follow scientific dissemination channels, the web will recommend similar content.There are two "attractor" structures that this video website usually follows.If we search for A, we will probably recommend B, C...Similar content.Content we like.Nice.

The algorithm will point in the direction of one or more large attractors, polarizing our internet access. Polarizing us .And with that we enclose/lock ourselves in a tiny bubble inside Google.But there is something which has more weight than previous searches or the playing time in a video: the like or "manita above".

I don't like the 'I like' button

If we have started with Google it is because it has become our window to the internet, but it is not the only system that designs a nice cage ideological around us using algorithms.It has long been shown that Twitter also performs that function helping us polarize our surroundings .

You live in a tiny bubble inside Google: this is how you segment your searches

The graph above shows "moral contagion based on political ideology." It can be seen how tweets written by liberal people (blue) are retweeted by liberals.And as written by conservatives (red), by conservatives.Barely a fraction manages to cross the gap.Thanks, Twitter.

A good part of this split comes from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn...they know what we like, and, as they know it, they show it to us and leave aside art, opinions, ideas or debates which, however, dislike us .The "I like" button has contributed to the neural networks of social networks know us.Maybe too much.

According to a study published by Wu Youyou (PhD in the NICO) and other researchers, some social networks are able to judge people's personality better than their own acquaintances, based on their fingerprint.The "I like" button has contributed a lot to generating this footprint.Even models society in ways we are not aware of , yet.

Adam Alter, author of 'Irresistible.Who has turned us into technological yonkies ?', analyzes the released dopamine after seeing a "Like" in our publications.He concludes that It has become a new drug.And Juan Soto Ivars already commented in Arden the networks' the power of this button, and its consequences.

Bubble, offense and needle universes

Soto Ivars also warned, reading the signs of the present, where social polarization leads.Butterfly skin for the mind, we ulcerate as soon as a hint of debate appears over the horizon to fight for our idea.Mechanisms are then activated Unclean as victimhood.

Google, with the help of its algorithm, helps us to weave a beautiful reality around us that from time to time is punctured.A foreign tweet or an external news enters in the form of a needle, our bubble universe makes 'pof' and the offense arises.The same about which the writer Ana Ribera Molinos spoke a few days ago in "I get offended, you get offended, he is offended, we are all asshole"; or that the writer and novelist Javier Marias analyzed asking for some calm and restraint.

You live in a tiny bubble inside Google: this is how you segment your searches

Did you test Google searches with your friends? Try now with the most searched terms in 2017.Or with any of these: Barca, Maxim, PP, Madrid.Now compare them with the people in your immediate environment, family and friends.And then ask to see the results of coworkers.

The experiment is interesting to verify and demonstrate how our interaction with the search engine segments our future searches and, therefore, locks us in the comfortable monochromatic prison of our choice.Not bad, it is a nice place.Until someone approaches a needle.

Images | iStock/ALLVISIONN, iStock/TheaDesign

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