Anyone seen/interested in this?
“The Sexual Politics of Google”
At Balkinization, Jack Balkin notes:
When you type “she invented” into Google, it returns: Did you mean: “he
invented”
The same, by the way, also applies for Google searches for “she
created,” “she succeeded,” and “she led.” Lest you think that this happens
for all active verbs, Google does not make the same suggestion for “she
followed” or “she failed.”
Balkin spotted a description of this phenomena at Digg, where by the second
comment the sexist “humor” is already flying. At Balkinization, the
commenters instead are quite focused on explaining why it isn’t Google’s
fault and isn’t sexist either, because darn it all, Google was just designed
that way! Yeesh.
–Ann Bartow, via my awesome colleague Josie Brown.
http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=1782, posted May 7 2007-05-08
