Note: see twin post via Izzy’s blog

Project background

As we were exploring potential paths for our project, we gravitated toward two central themes. The first had to do with the effects of the internet preserving our data: how small back-and-forth chats get fixed in our message history, how our children could eventually dig through our middle-school era Facebook posts. The second idea revolved around the “limitlessness” of our Google search results, and how we often fail to recognize the very real limits of Google’s records. At a certain point in our elongated conversation, Izzy tied this to how she turns to her dad for information. When it comes to politics especially, he hasthe weird local knowledge that you can’t find on Google. He knows who did what, how so-and-so actually feels about the big local issues, information that you can’t find on their campaign sites and that hasn’t yet made it from the local papers to the top of Google’s search results. We felt like there were some unexplored realms to how we interact with Google as a friend, and how interacting with a friend as our own Google can frame this conversation in a fresh light.

Googling has become instinctual

At least for the society that we are familiar with, googling is a part of daily life. Generally , when you want an answer to something, you “ask google” when this is not an option, what do we turn to?

Google is incomplete

Some things are still pretty hard to google for, you have to reframe your search several times, and sometimes not be able to find what you’re looking for, even if you feel like it should be out there. We have come to depend on google, and are frustrated when it does not provide.

Google holds our data

Google has so much data on us, and that is controversial. The claim to be using it to improve our browsing and target us with ads we will like. Does that work, or is it just creepy? What else might they do with our data in the future? We know some people who have conciously ceded their data to google and are fine with it (“I have nothing to hide”), and others who have intentionally cut google products almost completely out of their lives (“I have the right to privacy”).

We decided to google things for each other by proxy as a way to…

Increase Wonder 

We sought to suspend the state of not knowing answers, adding magic to receiving the information. A comedy sketch by Pete Holmes explains this feeling quite well.

Connect with another human by sharing info and helping one another

We sought to explore our relationship by trusting each other with our random curiosities and being each other’s access point to information. We think that we can curate responses better than an algorithm.

VPN searches through a friend

We sought to confuse google by searching the things the other person is interested in. Now, google thinks we care about/are interested in things that we actually aren’t.

Weekend plan:

Rather than Googling for information, we would instead ask one another. This would be limited purely to information that we would use a search engine to answer. We would still be allowed to navigate through web pages independently. This would last from Friday morning through Sunday night. We approached it as if the other person was just our friend who knew everything, and not as an algorithm, tried to ask questions instead of just a combination of keywords. We communicated through facebook messenger (because it is how we would normally communicate) and did not use google slides or docs to document the project.

What we expected:

  • better information returned to us
  • less reframing of searches
  • changed behavior?
  • growing our friendship

Izzy’s takeaways…

from asking questions:

Googling is fairly instinctual for me, and there were a few times I accidentally googled things, and didn’t realize until after I hit enter, especially at first. I found that asking David things was nice in that he usually knew exactly what I wanted, and the amount of information I was receiving was less overwhelming. However, sometimes I felt bad burdening David with too many questions, and realized a lot of the things I usually ask google can be easily figured out by going directly to the website that I know will have the answer, and google just serves the role of making sure I don’t get the URL wrong.

I found that it was nice to wonder for a little while about things that I asked David out of sheer curiosity, such as the lyrics to I am a Rock or what Mr. Rogers looks like. However, it worked less well for things that required comparing information from several websites. It was slightly frustrating to wait for David to figure out where to find the electrical components that I need ed, it seemed like a hard task and I felt bad putting that responsibility on David. It did work well though when I needed to get wood glue out of my pants, and David sent me a great list of options in the order that I should try them. If I had done this searching myself, I would have gotten overwhelmed by the number of options and their tradeoffs, and set it aside for later.

One takeaway that I had not anticipated, is that now I have a renewed excitement about being able to google things, and am more aware of my google usage. Unfortunately, I expect this to fade with time.

from answering questions:

When answering David’s questions it was interesting to learn about some of the things that I wouldn’t have learned about otherwise, such as the Chicago Mayoral race. But, I felt guilty if I hadn’t checked my phone for a while (exacerbated because it was the weekend) and found I had left David hanging. Sometimes I worried that I wasn’t giving David good enough answers, and also that I was spending too much time answering his questions, but did that balance out by reducing the time I spend answering my own?

David’s takeaways…

from asking questions:

Early on, it was freeing to know that I could send what was on my mind and not do any more to get the answer, even if that answer would be delayed. It felt like leaving gifts for myself, both by relieving the burden of finding information (gift for the present) and by providing that information when I was in a good space to absorb it (gift for the future). Even better, Izzy was also giving the gift, so that could make my thoughts for her grow fonder as well!

Sunday especially, as the vacation aspect of the weekend ebbed into the preparatory aspect of the weekend, I got stressy about my math homework, and how I couldn’t just use Izzy as a tool to guide me towards the right answer. There was something in questions about Chicago politics or famous cooks that brought an assumed joy into her answering, where-as her answering my math questions did nothing but stink. Maybe this is speaking to what level of intimacy is required to care for someone through ugly things (Izzy wasn’t my spouse-of-50-years pulling me through the hardships of life; she was an early-on friend who wanted to appreciate and grow close within a new way). And my relationship with math homework is often-times an ugly thing.

from answering questions:

  • It was exciting to learn what Izzy was learning, like using my connection with her to both become closer with the news / random information AND get closer in alignment with wherever her thoughts were.

  • On Friday, there was a question that I really didn’t know how to answer (it was the perfect question that I would like to punt to someone else through this kind of project) but still was obligated to answer. I ended up messaging someone else right off the bat since I knew they would have recommendations, but the responsibility still rested on me to pass that information along to Izzy.

Looking at the project, what worked and what didn’t work:

  • we did it over the weekend so that homework motivations wouldn’t get too in the way, but still did. maybe we would make an exception for homework in a future iteration?

  • our method of communication felt right, was practical and natural, allowed the project to focus on how we interact as friends

  • for David, it grew into a chore. What aspects of it exacerbated that attitude? He didn’t feel like he was choosing what he shared or how that fit into our friendship

  • one tech-attitude is toward transparency. Like making every experience a social experience through virtual/online tech. This project became that rather than approaching what we share with the discretion that comes with a friendship.

  • It did an interesting thing of highlighting how Google is a path-connector. Like instead of us going down a Yelp path or down a Vimeo path, we still use google as the gatekeeper, trusting that it is accurately (or maybe just pleasingly) providing us with the best way to go down that path. In this project, we are trusting each other to shape how we experience aspects of our internet world that we could just experience independently. Putting it that way makes it easy to see how the gatekeeper plays a very powerful role in how we experience our world.