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Author: Douglas Coupland
Release: 2015
Publisher: david desrimais — jean bolte edition (paris)
Declassified by Agent Palmer: results of search| provide a perfect snapshot via google
Quotes and Lines
we’re cavalier about google’s astonishing ocular presence, but imagine telling someone from twenty years ago, ‘in two decades you’ll be able to know the answer to just about any question anywhere, anytime, free, in less than one-tenth of a second.’ you’d be very impressed, right? yet here we are, taking it all for granted. we are an ungrateful species.
in this book i wanted to document what it is that we, as a species, are searching for in life – what is it we really want? … and what better a place to do this than google? so my goal was simple: make a long list of keywords and phrases such as ‘why’ or ‘when did’ or ‘family’ or ‘funny’ – and then investigate how people actually use these words in searches. i chose one thousand in the end. however, making this happen wasn’t easy. google’s principles on data security and personal privacy are strictly upheld and allow no wiggle room. so as there was no point trying to change those rules, i asked, what could we do with search data?
the data in this book came from all global searches in the month of february, 2015, many billions of queries in total. the only results kept were those repeated at least fifty times on a single day. the data was then narrowed down to english language. also, all google searches are done in lower case.
media genius marshall mcluhan believed that the only way to stay afloat and alive in the maelstrom of modern life was to constantly be on the alert for patterns. for mcluhan, pattern recognition was what keeps a person safe. you don’t need to find any patterns, but the searching is what matters and what will protect you. i’ve noticed hundreds of patterns in doing this book but will only mention a few here, if only to make your data experience a bit less confusing, for starters…
the branding warp
recency
news bump
oracular searches
seeming randomness
doctor internet
homework
cul-de-sacs
ikea words
dung
music
Intro written by Coupland in Paris, May 2015