Today, thanks to Google, the most dominant of those engines, we have a tool that taps into humanity’s hive mind better than anything Wells could have imagined. We have snapshots of the information people seek when there’s no barrier between them and their curiosity save for an open field and a flashing cursor. We have … Autocomplete.
And Autocomplete offers much more than insight into people’s queries about love (“why is love … so hard/important/so complicated”) and life (“will life ever … get better/be like star trek”) and mysterious rashes (“on face/on neck/on arms/on legs”). When it comes to politics, Google’s crowdsourced search predictions are shockingly revealing, offering largely unmediated insights into people’s investigations and observations of their elected officials: think of them as real-time push polls accessible and viewed by millions. Think the public is full of high-minded individuals who, in the privacy of their own browsers, turn to Google to understand the intricacies of our political system? Nope. It turns out many of us would rather know if, say, Secretary of State John Kerry has had plastic surgery than whether he’s about to clinch a deal with Iran. The burning question about House Speaker John Boehner? Why he cries so often. About New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker? Whether he’s gay.
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