1. 1. Define: algorithm, synonymous, evokes, byzantine, acquisitions, honorific, innocuous, iterations
2. Does Google rule the web? Does anybody rule the web?
3. The writer calls Google "the world's most powerful Internet company." What is power? What does it mean
for a company to have power?
4. Do you use Google? Why do you use the search engine that you do?
5. What is information? Why has a computer formula rather than, for instance, expert human searchers,
proven to be the most successful model for finding information?
6. Why isn't Google content to "rest on its laurels"?
7. Do you agree that Facebook and Twitter attacked Google's "central premise"?
8. Why do we trust the "collective intelligence" of people throughout the world with whom we are not
familiar?
9. Are there other ways that we access knowledge and information that is widely dispersed among people?
10. In what situations does Google produce results that you like? In what situations has it failed to help? Have
other ways of surfing the internet proven more effective? Has an offline search for the information been
successful?
11. If someone in class knows a lawyer, real estate agent or another professional, try searching for that person
using a similar search to the one described in the article. Does it work? Now try the search described in the
article. What do you see? Now try these searches on Bing.
12. If Google recognizes hot dog as a word that is associated with mustard rather than a phrase that is
interchangable with "boiling puppies," does that mean that it knows the word in the way that you know it? Are
the meanings of words based solely on their associations with other words?
13. Based on outward appearances, is Google's "understanding" and your understanding of words similar? Is a
calculator's "understanding" of mathematics and your understanding similar?
14. "Then you are not matching words; you are actually trying to match meaning." What is the difference
between words themselves and their meaning?
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1
