The Google research team has been working on an update to their search ranking algorithm that attempts to ascertain a factor known as “knowledge based truth.” The Ministry of Truth (joking?) will be delighted to know that the final element to their reconstruction of Reality is the hijacking of the validity or “truth” of any given subject.
Of course, this has more far-reaching implications than a person can reasonably understand when it comes to the labeling of all the Big Data that has been gathered en masse for the last few decades. Google’s censorship of information has been widely criticized by the international community, while Americans are much more accustomed to the practices of mass surveillance and mass media propaganda. Google’s reliance on aggressive methods to secure ad revenue is largely disguised by their abundant business and consumer products that are free of charge. The harvesting of all this information allows them to obtain data that is both fiction as well as non-fiction in nature, but does the company really need to have a stake in the valuation of that data outside of its organization?
Writer Hal Hodson seems to believe that “the internet is stuffed with garbage. Google has devised a fix – rank websites according to their truthfulness.” This belief is not only incredulous, but one has to wonder who the ideal internet user really is. Is the internet only useful for knowledge based academic pursuits, or has the intense proliferation of digital artwork and wealth of community discussions across the web been discounted by Hodson and other non-thinkers?
The only way to approach this situation reasonably is that of a critical viewpoint – since no individual can understand the breadth of the internet’s information, usefulness, much less its validity in combination with reality. A sophist approach to Truth would allow corporations to bid on their native advertisements by altering the facts or value of certain “facts” across web pages online via Google search algorithms. If the company decides to commit to a project of this magnitude and severity without presenting it wholly to the open source community, it should be thoroughly denounced and rejected by all internet users and those who value the pursuit of Truth and its wisdom.
Is knowledge really the elemental basis for Truth?
Google seems to think so.