As in: Hypertext

I'm working on a random web generator that uses google and a bunch of filters to grab stuff. As part of the test phase, I'm using lots of different test phrases to see how it reacts to a variety of input, and one of the test phrases I put in was "subway muggings". After it filtered and shuffled around some pages, this was the fifth-rated response:

Next up in our Earthlink sponsored series on the "Future of Wireless" - Corante profiles Chaska, Minnesota. The small city rolled out its municipal Wi-Fi offering in November and has already seen more than 10% of its residents sign up for the service. It's also attracting a lot of attention from big cities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco that are eager to hear its lessons learned. Read the article interview here.

This passage epitomizes the unheimlich of randomness and the web. Who knows why I was interested in subway muggings (I ate lunch at Subway yesterday), but the search and filters (which have no intentional bias toward Minnesota) yielded a passage about the town I grew up in. Weird. I emailed a few fellow Chaskans about this, and they suggested that:

• "I'll bet you experienced some Freudian coding into your java. That is too weird. "
• "...and maybe some input from the internet google spirits."

I love those ideas too. Freud and the Internet spirits. Rings of Ulmer's Internet oracles.

Posted by briley at February 25, 2005 6:16 AM