andrew hugill

I’m not into the same old thing—lunch dates, dinner dates, movie dates, trips to Paris dates. It’s an echo chamber. Don’t expect that from me. At work my colleagues and I have been playing with pataphysical find/replace technologies to inspire invention in search engines. Disappointed with the echo chamber and how search engines retrieve basically the same results for searches, we imagined a “syzygy surfer” or pataphysical search engine based on “patadata.” The search engine is a sort of subjective engine that retrieves results for search that are syzygistic, anomalous, or clinamen. The emphasis is not on utility but on surprise, new associations, and a “web search can facilitate inspirational learning through an exploratory search journey…” (Me et al. 249).

I’m interested in Muhlhauser and Self’s pontificating about find/replacing a pataphysical search engine with a “feminist” search engine. It led me to a number of wonderings. How could a feminist search engine differ from Google or Bing? How could it be equitable? How could a feminist search engine challenge the echo chamber? What would be the indicators of such results? Would information be presented in a syzygistic way, perhaps, with a table of popular results and less popular results side by side in a modified hierarchy? Could anomaly be used to by juxtaposing findings with Google to show systemic biases in search and culture more clearly?

Don’t expect the same old same old with me. It’s same new same new with me. I’m brunch dates, breakfast dates, video game dates, trips to Paris, Texas dates.