The Search Engine to Post-News Pipeline
News and links
On the Menu
The Search Engine to Post-News Pipeline
Vice is apparently dead, its online records soon to follow. Google is testing the removal of the News tab from its increasingly AI-reliant search results. News is dead, long live the news!
But really, what value does quality journalism have to a company willing to turn off news access to an entire country? Take Nest for example, Google’s extraordinarily successful effort to integrate itself into every facet of a consumer’s life. With over 52 million units sold, Nest has become the de facto home security system, streaming device, sound system, thermostat, smoke detector, doorbell, personal shopper, and confidante to hundreds of millions of people. And by making consumers so dependent on its services, Google has rendered its past as a reliable search engine obsolete.
While writing this, I had a flashback to 2009 when Google aired their first ever commercial. Any idea what they were promoting? If you guessed Google Search, you guessed correctly. The ad, which aired 15 years ago, has 8 million views on YouTube and features only a screen as various Google searches tell a love story in verse. The ad even earned a sequel in 2020, but this time, when the words “how to not forget” are typed into the search bar, they begin to fade away to sad music. “Hey Google,” an elderly man says, “Show me photos of me and Loretta,” and suddenly the music swells as Google Assistant fulfills the request instead. He gives more prompts, teaching Google about his late wife: “Remember, Loretta loved going to Alaska…and scallops!”
A few years ago, my six-year-old nephew spotted an unopened Google Nest on our counter and immediately offered to set it up. “It was a gift,” we tried to explain to him, “we aren’t keeping it.” He was perplexed. I mean, this was a boy who thought of Siri and Alexa as personal friends (and why wouldn’t he, given their ubiquity in his life?).
Google’s next step, presumably, would be to render our ‘real lives’ inseparable from our online ones, such that we become fully integrated with our algorithmic selves. Why bother to use Gmail if I can command a virtual assistant to send an email to my mother-in-law instead? Why search for information when I can ask Google Assistant?
I have to believe that there’s a tipping point, and that the potential loss of entire digital archives could be enough to shake us loose from our complacency. I’ve written previously that once our data is digitized, it “is both no longer entirely ours, nor is it entirely safe from disappearing completely.” So while our reliance on technology to compartmentalize our lives has given OpenAI the perfect opportunity to swoop in and offer exponential convenience at the risk of longterm environmental corrosion, it may also be true that the collapse of the human internet could result in something new entirely. What would we fight to save?
Why TikTok Is the New Water Cooler Station
Last week, a TikTok user named Reesa Teesa went viral for her 52-part series entitled, “Who TF Did I Marry?” As The Cut explains,
“Over the course of several days, [Teesa] posted dozens of ten-minute videos unraveling how she ended up dating, marrying, and eventually divorcing a guy she claims lied about pretty much everything in his personal life.”
Teesa’s videos have blown up, amassing millions of views and nearly 3 million followers. Besides her obvious story-telling skills, Teesa’s popularity also stems from how much fun TikTok users were having as they waited for every salacious new update. I saw users joking about cancelling their Friday night plans to stay home and catch up on the “episodes.” The experience was reminiscent of Twitter’s heyday, when you could still reliably find a community within the content you were consuming. Of course, whether that community is organic or a byproduct of TikTok’s algorithm encouragement is inconsequential.
On My Reading List This Weekend
On self documentation: your iPhone notes app remembers all your past selves (Polyester)
- ’s brilliant ౨ৎ Girl blog, on the evolution of the online personal essay and why we should all strive to be more ambivalent with our ‘I’s. See also this tweet from Elisa Gabbert: “I am reluctant to make new marks in an old book my younger self already underlined… it feels like writing in someone else’s book.”
“A dirty word for bitter girls”: an ode to blog era feminism (Polyester)
Sheila Heti and Phyllis Rose in conversation: “During that first wave of seventies feminism, merely telling women’s stories was a political act, and deeply refreshing. All information about women was a gift.” (Granta)
Speaking of Sheila Heti, Catherine Lacey’s review of Alphabet Diaries has me even more excited to read it.
Alabama hospital puts pause on IVF in wake of ruling saying frozen embryos are children (AP)
The gaudy promises of cool-girl underewear brands (Haloscope)
“I think my husband is trashing my novel on Goodreads!” (The Cut)
What I Watched in February
Since my last report, I’ve watched:
Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951) — Not my favourite of Hitchcock’s (may I suggest you just watch Rope or North by Northwest instead?) but it did hint towards interesting dynamics around virtuous men and ‘promiscuous’ women, such that even the main character isn’t entirely ‘good,’ even if the film paints him as such.
Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003) — I’ve been working on a project surrounding Sofia Coppola’s oeuvre, so in the words of Hari Nef, I “finally grew up and watched lost in translation.” Detachment and alienation as experienced through the eyes of both a jaded older man and an idealistic young woman. Released between The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette, Lost represents an early look into the themes that have continued to dominate Coppola’s work ever since.
Saltburn (Fennell, 2023) — I just wanted to finally be part of the discourse, ok! I liked the visuals, but it’s pretty clear when a director starts with the visuals and works backwards from there (Coppola is not exempt from this). May I…suggest you watch The Talented Mr. Ripley instead?