Google away but ...

Revisiting the Media Battle last September. One of the 'clients' was a public library looking into attracting new groups of users (students, freelancers, etc) while keeping the existing ones. I was shocked during the intermediate pitches to see how students working on this case were almost 'allergic' to books and did not see the point of libraries nor librarians.

Tagged with: media battle, library, google, information skills,

The filter bubble

The amount of information available to us has exploded in the last couple of decades. With the enormous amount available comes the need to filter this information. Filtering the information we want to have has become big business. Just look at Google or Facebook. These information giants control a lot of what we see online. Of course we have some influence on what we see. But it’s just the illusion of that total control that’s the problem.
We’ve been talking about media literacy for a couple of years now, and what strikes me is that a lot of people that consider themselves media literate, don’t even know that Google arranges their ads and results based on your previous searches and visited websites. The same thing counts for Facebook. Facebook looks at what friends you interact most with, and puts them on the top of the list. Pretty nifty, and handy. But there’s a problem. If the company’s that control the filters filter everything they presume you like. How are you supposed to get balanced information. In other words, it seems that everyone online surrounding me is talking about the same thing. This is what’s come to be known as the “filter bubble”. Your online life is in a bubble created by filters. This phenomenon is not new. In a way it’s a form of censorship, I believe. Just imagine that a government decided what we find if we search. I bet the American Tea Party would be quite upset if it was the federal government filtering their search results. I imagine some comparisons to socialist regimes, and a couple of Nazi comparisons as a result. I wonder what Glenn Beck would have to say about that. Wonder if he filters information…
I assume that these filters are in place to make our lives easier, to find the information, we probably want to find, faster. And I for one do not object to that. As long as I know that I’m in my bubble. And as long as I can get out of the bubble, there’s no problem, is there?
Ah well, probably only the people interested in the CrossmediaLab will find this blog in their bubble.

Tagged with: filter bubble, google, facebook,

What's this with QR?

Strolling through the streets of my hometown, my eye was attracted to a poster in a tram stop. The poster announced that Samsung has launched a new phone in cooperation with Google; the new Nexus. And then there was the QR code. Curious as I am, I opened my QR reader app in my iPhone and scanned the QR. Having installed a new and quite fast new QR code reader at QRscanner.nl, I was led to a website almost straight away. I tell you, it was a website. A fripp’n website and not a mobile site. I could not believe my eyes. Samsung in collaboration with Google led me to a practically non-readable common website to try sell me their new Nexus. Within an instant, I was in complete navigation confusion. Where was I? What were they trying to tell me? What was their call-to-action? Never ever shall I be drawn into the innovations of Samsung again.

Tagged with: deloitte, oneshoe, samsung, nexus, qr, google,

The Privacy issue

,,Google is watching you”, is a phrase you hear more and more often. A lot of people tend to get more and more afraid of Google. Reason? They know what you search for, if you have a Gmail account they know what you are emailing about and so on. Google logs your data in order to improve their service to their customers. We all want better service, but we are afraid of giving information to Google. There is an option to opt out though.

Tagged with: google, privacy, facebook,