once, when the Net was young, I made the mistake of doing an image search for "Miranda",
in class.
It was a natural enough a mistake, a student had asked a question about the moons of Saturn and I recalled a recent NASA image which illustrated the point I wanted to make.
Try it.
the class got a bit of an eyeful for a brief second, and a good giggle while I rapidly narrowed the search and found what I was looking for
I, of course, being an adult and stuff, have "Safe Search Off" normally.
Although that was a class computer and had generic preferences set. To "Off" I gather.
I'm not squeamish about peoples' dangly bits and generally thought myself to be unshockable, though the Net continues to try to prove me wrong.
This did make me think, and I did an experiment.
These are the most popular girls' names for 1991 - 18 years ago - in the US
Jessica, Ashley, Amanda, Brittany, Samantha, Sarah, Stephanie, Jennifer, Elizabeth, Emily.
A google image search on any of these names returns nude or pornographic images, on the first page, although for three of them historical figures or major celebrities almost saturate the top rank hits limiting the tackier images. I suspect a minor sociological study would reveal some interesting trends in which names lead off with "art nudes" vs which show XXX rated porn as the top hits.
In contrast the image search on the top ten boys' names for 1991 shows only two instances of nudity on the first page; for David and Daniel, if you must know.
This is a a really pathetic comment on the state of the Net, and our society in general.
And says something about the drive for sex in males, and the commodization of women.
Not to mention the prevalence of really bad photography.
Interestingly, the net makes porn more available and visible, but not necessarily more prevalent. A study I saw two years back showed more porn present in UK magazine and bookshops (18 % of content) than the web (around 11%, AFAIK).
Actually, I don't think I have found a single name that does not eventually show porn in an image search. Years ago, I suggested a betting game, where two names are chosen, and bets are made as to how many pages will pass before the first porn (for some names, the rules must be changed to how many pages before the first page without porn).
The game also works with pictures of pets.
This is not necessarily a reflection of the state of the Net. It might be more a reflection of the ability of porn site operators to game the search function.
I'd argue that the ability of porn site operators to game search functions is a reflection fo the state of the Net
I recently saw someone remark that the way to tell if a depiction of a nude female was are or porn was whether the name was that of a goddess or the name of a month. (Also, isn't Miranda in Reaver territory?)
Sorry, that should read "depiction of a nude female was art or porn"
Search engines use the Net but they are not the Net. Only if you argue that search engines produce "legitimate" results could you argue that the results of a search are an overall indication of the state of the Net.
true, but there is some non-trivial coupling there
- an index is not the book, but for some books the structure, accuracy and utility of the index are part of the functionality and aesthetic of the book
the Net is somewhat analogous - no single search engine or algorithm "is" the Net, but the ability to index, rank and search the Net is a large part of its functionality and form
With moderate safe search on, during a meeting I made the mistake of searching for "LISA" during a discussion of NASA Astrophysics missions. All caps didn't matter, but the folks in the meeting I was in (1) didn't care, and (2) only got exposed to skimpy lingerie, not full nudity.
When search engines were in their infancy, one of the ways that they tried to fight such content-spamming was to penalize sites that had keywords in the meta fields unrelated to the subject of the page. Pornsters then added text fields that were the same color as the background so that the viewers would see "blank" sections on the index page.
It was frustrating for me as a porn searcher, because I was searching for my own particular perverted (yet within the confines of consensual sex, mind,) tastes, I would find garbage completely unrelated to what I was looking for.
The pornsites would pack such pages full of female names in hopes that someone may land on their page while looking for a friend (or a moon of Saturn) and stay to buy something.
The engines are doing to their best to keep ahead of such practices by penalizing content spammers, but I wonder if it isn't an endless game of "cat and mouse" between site developers and search engine moderators.