Gleick invited everyone to participate in the discussion, and while he managed everything smoothly, the mindset gap between the lecturer and the audience was easy to notice.

Referring to his experience working as a science reporter for the New York Times, Gleick contrasted the old media world and its leading newspapers and journalists with the new googlized world and its drowned-in-information citizens.

If you haven’t had a chance to read his book on Information, reading his article titled How Google Dominates Us will give you a grasp of his ideas on this topic.

Although various points were discussed in that highly interactive session, I just want to draw your attention to one of the issues discussed there: the concept of serendipity.

Definition of Serendipity

The Oxford Dictionary has defined serendipity as the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Horace Walpole coined the word serendipity from the Persian word Sarandib, referring to the old Persian fairy tale about three Sarandib princes who were always making accidental discoveries (Sarandib was Persian word for Sri Lanka).

The happy accident of discovery is another general description used for the word serendipity.

But in the context of the information and media, it’s easier and more helpful to consider serendipity as finding information which you were not looking for.

Referring to the old newspaper-age, Gleick provides a simple example of serendipity:

while reading the newspaper page by page, you see a short article about an event in a far country. You were not looking for such an article and never thought that it could be interesting for you, but now you are engaged with the article and may find it helpful or insightful.

Serendipity in the Digital Age

Because of their nature, serendipities were a common incident in the traditional media. Reading, watching and listening was linear and you had no other choice except following the content from the beginning to the end.

However, with the current digital tools and technologies, the user/audience has much more power in managing the inflow of information.

Most of search algorithms are proud of customized search results. Social media platforms filter the information and present you a handpicked set of the most relevant published content.

Filter bubble and echo chamber are coined to describe the situations where there is no chance of confronting with the serendipities.

As it is discussed in the video, someone may argue that the duty of the search engines is not to provide the user with the experience of serendipities. Users of the search engines, reach them with a specific question and expect to get the most relevant answer as fast as possible. Therefore, it’s the duty of the other institutions, such as universities and magazines, to make serendipities for their audience.

In his party controversial discussion, Gleick says that many users of the search engines, do not have a specific question in mind. They just start with a keyword and there’s still some room for providing unexpected answers for them (or at least consider a few serendipities in the search engine results page). But one of the attendees told him that usually, user refines its query and Google considers this back and forth communication as a dialogue. Therefore there’s no reason to derail such a purposeful conversation with irrelevant information called serendipity or whatsoever.

A Book about the Concept of Serendipity

While searching the web for the concept of serendipity, I learned that there’s a book dedicated to serendipity: Accidental Information Discovery.

I’ve just read a few pages of the book, but it seems to me that there are many fantastic ideas about the serendipity concept for anyone interested in this topic. The book is published in 2016, five years after the discussion of Gleick and Googlers in Mountain View.

The post Search Engines and the Future of Serendipity appeared first on webmindset.

But also as a person in love with McLuhan‘s Tetrad-of-Media-Effects, I have always the following question in mind:

What does the technology flip into when pushed to extremes?

The above question is called reversal question in McLuhan’s literature.

Let’s take a look at the trend of search industry since two decades ago:

Just after the popularization of digital technology, we were so happy with the new tools and equipment for the content generation and content storage.

Soon we became overwhelmed with digital content. Most of this content could be called digital rubbish. Reducing the content production and maintenance costs, always makes it possible to create and publish lower quality content.

So we looked for a technology to look for diamonds lost in the mud. Here the search industry emerged. One after the other, search engines announced their presence. Taking a look at the search engine history, seems that google was the 21 in the market.

Although it was not clear that we will face with the close-to-the-monopoly-state of today, but as any industry moves toward consolidation in the maturity stage, it was reasonable to expect merger and acquisitions of the companies and disappearance of the weaker ones.

Search engines became obsolete one after the other and we were happy that just one king will reign the territory. It will not be necessary to optimize your content for various search engines. Also, it will be easier to find similar contents and follow your competitors.

The next development was customized-search-results. Something which makes the life easier and happier for most of us. Now, google tries to deliver the best content based on our search histories and individual preferences.

Just a few years ago, I was forced to look at the fourth and fifth page in search results to find my target content. Nowadays I rarely go to the second page.

Sure part of this belongs to the better content evaluation algorithm, but also we should not forget the contribution of customized search results in this rewarding experience.

Now, it’s time to go back to the McLuhan’s question. What will happen when this new medium be pushed in extremes?

This is the situation I call google blindness. I borrow the term from the famous experiment in inattentional blindness ran by Simons and  Charbis and is referred to as Focus Blindness.

In focus blindness, we are blind to many other objects in the context not due to visual impairment, but because of excessive focus on an object in the middle of the scene.

Same happens in the extreme state of search era. We are becoming google blind. after a couple of searches in the web, most of the other options not clicked and selected before will be dismissed as irrelevant.

Search engines try to customize results for us. This has been a great favor. But seems that the world is becoming narrower and many real objects and entities cease to exist in the virtual world as the search engines are trying to seek more relevant data.

This is not a new phenomenon. Just in older ages, the same happened to the kings. All of their men learned by experience that some of the news makes the king happy and the others will make him mad.

Gradually, everyone learned to be the messenger of good news and living the bad ones to the others. Kings became blind to the reality and it was the beginning of the end. Seems that the google is becoming our blinding company.

Now the question on the table: Who will reign the post-search era?

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