New Perspectives-Module 3 Summary
Module 3 of new Perspectives was particularly unique and insightful for me. It goes over web searches, hits, web spiders, robots, links, source verification and more. Many things in this chapter I had only heard about in passing (like ‘hits’ for example), but I didn’t know the origin, meaning or context of them. Something that surprised me (even during the in-class discussion) was that search engines do not actually “search” the web but instead look into their own database of webpages. This would explain why Bing search results are so incredibly different from Google’s search results. It also explains why something feels off when I search for something complex on Google vs Bing (I generally prefer Google). Though one advantage of Bing over Google is that on Google there seem to be far more sponsored sights listed at the top.
There is one type of website that pretty much relies on clickbait to garner the hits discussed In the chapter. Fandom tabloids such as CBR and ScreenRant have a strategy of saying something vague like “Netflix subscribers have only 48 hours to watch famous sci-fi masterpiece” and do not get into the specifics on what they are talking about until three paragraphs down. For paid advertising on a particular search, blocking the ad or clicking do not show this result does not seem to do much at all as it isn’t even targeted, just paid. It is inevitable that you would see large amounts of celebrity tabloids and half-truths on the front page of the internet because of this.
Building off the former paragraph, the chapter also talks about verifying a source and the implications of tools like Wikipedia. I, like many, was taught never to use Wikipedia as an actual source and when I was younger, I had thought they mostly just told you that because they just don’t want you getting all the information super quickly at one place. By my senior year I would learn the true reason why and in recent years I’ve come to know an even deeper reason. Wikipedia is a tool that is generally good for information that is general and uncontroversial, such as what a dog is. When it comes to controversial topics however, individuals have various perspectives and views and will try to back up their side of the story. This isn’t to say Wikipedia cannot be a good general overview for these kinds of things, but like with any encyclopedia it is better to investigate the source they use themselves. I once took a philosophy class that I loved in high school and we wrote extremely long and detailed research papers. I came out with reference sections that were over three pages long.