I have found myself thinking about the extraordinary power of the internet these days. The democratization of media is pretty incredible and enables people who would otherwise not have a voice to be heard by millions. With so many competing voices and messages it is increasingly difficult to be heard and harder yet without knowing the best way for people to find you.
This is where search engine optimization comes in. It is important to know how search engines work, so you can understand the best way for people to find you. In the case study of President Lincoln, it was important to identify how people search for our 16th president, and then to repeat this key word as much as possible in order to be picked up and brought to a higher position on the all important search page and to enable your voice to be heard. The problem with this approach is that the very mechanism that enables you to be heard is in a way responsible for dulling your voice—or at least makes it less interesting to listen to.
I am curious to see how the emergence of technology will impact the English language. Will the Yahoo! Style Guide replace Miriam Webster? Will a thesaurus become a relic of the past? What price will we pay in order for our voice to be heard?
1 comment:
To piggy back on what you are saying, Mary, on the power of the 'search engine' on the metamorphosis of spoken language, I think it is also interesting to note the possible effect that search engine usage has on our, humans', creativity and tendency to draw parallels between things.
Have you seen the Bing commercial where each person in a grocery store starts to mechanically reply to each other with responses of far-fetched parallels? A food fight ensues quickly from a simple question asked between a daughter and father (if I remember correctly).
Anyway, these are silly examples, but it does seem interesting to me that search engines have put a premium on people's ability to recall words on the spot, in order to find the items, services, etc. that they desire.
I DO think that electronic thesauri will replace the printed thesaurus though....
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