As I grew up in Florida in my teens, we spent many summer days in the movie theaters. During the 1980’s we did not have access to the internet, of course. We got the listings for the movies at each theater and their show times from the local newspaper. Alternatively, you may also call the phone number for the movie theater; each theater established a phone line that played their listings and times on repeat. My sisters and I had a handful of these numbers committed to memory. I swear that I’m not making this up.
Today, the movie experience is vastly different. First, we open a web browser on the computer or mobile app on the phone. Second, we pick the movie and time in our favorite theater days ahead of time. Next, we select the seats that we want or alternatively pick a different time if we can’t find good seats. Enter your credit card number and reserve those seats. Upon arriving at the theater, simply show them the QR code and head to your seats. You don’t need to handle cash, nor do you need paper tickets anymore.
Of course, technology has vastly changed many of our daily experiences. The biggest reason that I bring up the movie experience is this is the one that surprises my younger friends. “You called the movie theater on the phone for movie times?”
The internet as a gateway to new experiences
While the internet certainly made some activities more accessible (or easier), like the movie going experience above, it transformed others from practically impossible to common. Having a wide range of taste in music, there were artists whose music I sought that didn’t have their music in the local music stores. This included Spanish music as well as some European dance music.
Suddenly, the meticulous task of driving to and browsing local music stores was replaced with typing words into a search engine and looking at results. Naturally, the more obscure the search, the more questionable the results. Searching for such music often landed on web sites in other countries. Sometimes the website looked questionable, other times the default currency was Mexican pesos or Euros, and still others the shipping cost more than the product itself.
Very quickly, the entire world became accessible. It was an exciting time.
The basics behind a search engine
On a very basic level, all a search engine does is catalog everything it sees, stores some information about what it sees (like taking notes in a lecture), and finally, spit it back at you when you ask for it. However, the devil is in the details. Search engines can do any of the above differently, and we develop favorites based on how well it gets us to what we want, like Bing or Google.
As consumers of a search engine, we are a fickle bunch. The search engine’s aspiration is to get you relevant results on the first page of results (and really on the top of that page). Very few will scroll onto the fourth or fifth page of search results, opting instead to redefine our search. This is where it gets tricky.
Companies will pay the search engine money to serve you ads when you search for a particular term, even if that’s not what you searched for. The ads are interspersed among your search results, the difference is barely noticeable. The more ads they serve, the more money they make. However, they also run the risk of pushing out useful results lower in the rank, and alienating you, the fickle user.
The way that they rank the remaining results is based on how other people have reacted to those results. Initially, the search engine may evaluate 20 websites as having the same rank. However, how searchers respond to results matters. The search engine will boost the rank of search results that get more attention. The more popular results will inevitably float to the top of the list. For instance, for years the top search result for “Santorum” did not lead to the Pennsylvania Senator.
A reflection of us
Rick Santorum was unable to control the results from the web search. I only imagine that he did not care for his name to be synonymous with “a frothy mixture of lubricant and fecal matter as an occasional byproduct of anal sex”. However, society made its choice. We collectively, single click at a time, pushed that definition up to the top of the search results. We may not individually agree with it, but we collectively agree with it. How could we not? It’s a product of who we are.
Rick Santorum eventually leaves the Senate in 2007, and years later, as the above article suggests, the search results eventually reflect the person, not the colorful definition. Of course, people lose interest and moods change. Once he was no longer setting legislative policy, people stopped flinging as much venom. He was just another asshole with an opinion, no longer setting policy for our country.
While what we search for is certainly a reflection of our society, the results of our searches are a more subtle reflection of who we are. And while this may be sobering, let’s just ponder about image searches.
Selecting picture search results
All search engines also have a facility to search for images. Similar to their search results for websites, each search engine also ranks their images by the selection of their users. The most frequently selected images will float to the top of the results. As such, those pictures we see from our search results, are a reflection of what we see.
Let’s put that on pause. Let’s ponder about our population demographics here in the states. Here are numbers from 2021:
- White: 57.8% (about 3 in 5)
- Hispanic or Latino: 18.7% (about 1 in 5)
- Black or African American: 12.1% (about 1 in 8)
- Asian: 5.9% (about 1 in 17)
- And anecdotally female: about 50%
Now, given no other external factors such as poverty, misogyny, and racial bias, the distribution among any sufficiently large group of people should align along the above numbers. They do not.
The picture results from searches
Let’s try a little experiment. Go to your favorite search engine, tap on the image option, and search for a profession. Pick whatever you’d like. Look at the thumbnail images of results. Do they align with the above demographics? Probably not. I was surprised to find that most pictures of “engineers” have pictures with hardhats. If we acknowledge that picture search results are a reflection of who we are, what do we see when we look at that mirror?
Of course, we can rationalize that the reason why most pictures searches reflect a particular demographic is because it accurately reflects the demographics for that profession. For instance, you may reason that most pictures of “fighter pilots” are white men because most fighter pilots are white men. That’s even as the Navy selects a woman as a Blue Angels pilot.
The real answer is much more nuanced than this. It’s a feedback loop. If society collectively doesn’t envision women or people of color as fighter pilots, as the image search results would indicate, isn’t it plausible that it then becomes more difficult for either a woman or a person of color to become a fighter pilot independent of their competency? It’s a chicken and egg problem.
To quote Amanda Gorman’s final words from “The Hill We Climb”:
if only we’re brave enough to see it,
if only we’re brave enough to be it.
The subtle question that we need to ask ourselves, if we are, by virtue of examining our image search results, literally unable to see it… Are we therefore inadvertently impeding people from being it? How can we possibly say that we’re not?
Let’s be the instrument of change. Let’s collectively be brave enough to see it.