Unsupervised Computing, Chapter 1: Search
Now that we roughly defined the distinction between supervised and unsupervised computing, we can take our first step:
Opt out from Google search to a search engine that does not track you and exploit your behavioural data.
Only inspired action carries meaning. So what is the inspiration here? Why would we want to opt out of Google search?
- Google shows you several Ads before you get to the actual organic search results.
- All your searches are tracked — and what you search for says a lot about you. It shows google what your interests are and what you care about. This information is very valuable to advertisers.
- Let’s say you search for “pregnancy test” — it will make sense then to show you either ads for baby cloths or for contraceptives. Your later searches will tell Google exactly what route to go.
- Look at your own search history and go a couple weeks back. Do you remember? Google does too.
There are many alternatives to Google, but if your concern is not being tracked, try DuckDuckGo. And here we go with the tradeoff:
Because Google tracked your every move, you are used to “personalised” search results. Google’s algorithms are really good at predicting what results matter most to you — because Google has collected data about you, probably for many years.
So the results of any other search engine will of course not be as perfect as Google’s. Especially if that search engine simply refuses to track people.
The good part is: in most cases that is hardly noticable. 80% of my search works perfectly fine in DuckDuckGo. For some special stuff I need to fall back on Google, especially local results: since Google has the immense backbone of Google Maps and since all businesses and other locations want to be findable there, all that data is reflected in searches for local results.
Falling back on Google where DuckDuckGo fails is really simple to do though: there nice little feature called “bang search”. With certain key letters you can forward your search to, say Google.
!g xxxxywill lead you to a Google search on xxxxxy!yt xxxxywill lead you to a YouTube search on xxxxy!w xxxxywill lead you to a Wikipedia search on xxxxxy
…and so forth, you get the idea: https://duckduckgo.com/bang
However, for now, let’s commit to trying it out. How is this:
For two weeks I will keep DuckDuckGo as my default search engine. I will only fall back to Google if I cannot find what I need.
(If you do not know how to change your “default search engine” — don’t google it… rather search for it on DuckDuckGo.)
Two weeks should give you a) a solid feel about DuckDuckGo and b) get you over the initial, very human hurdles of “this is new I don’t like it” and “this is not as perfect as it was before and I don’t like it”. It’s a tradeoff. You give up a bit of convenience. You gain back a bit of privacy and autonomy.
If DuckDuckGo is now your default search engine: Congratulations! You just did your first step in unsupervised computing.
And since we all love some badges and stickers, I might make someday… not now though.
In the next chapter we will up our game a little — and change our browser 🙀
Until then, stay safe, stay armed ✌️