Monday, March 20, 2006
WELL GOSH, MAYBE THEY COULD SUE THE COMPUTER
Amazon.com last week modified its search engine after an abortion rights organization complained that search results appeared skewed toward anti-abortion books.
Until a few days ago, a search of Amazon's catalog of books using the word "abortion" turned up pages with the question, "Did you mean adoption?" at the top, followed by a list of books related to abortion.
Amazon removed that question from the search results page after it received a complaint from a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a national organization based in Washington.
"I thought it was offensive," said the Rev. James Lewis, a retired Episcopalian minister in Charleston, W.Va. "It represented an editorial position on their part."
Patty Smith, an Amazon spokeswoman, said there was no intent by the company to offer biased search results. She said the question "Did you mean adoption?" was an automated response based on past customer behavior combined with the site's spelling correction technology.
Continue reading...
"No intent to offer biased results"?? Obviously what this whole technique is about is offering biased results--"biased" to the interest of the person doing the search. It's just that THESE PARTICULAR BIASED RESULTS have become an embarrassment. Normally the biased results are welcomed.
I thought it was noteworthy that the Unitarian Universalist Church turned up near the end of the article on the side of abortion rights. Gotta try to keep track of who is on which side in these political confrontations. UUAs apparently don't like babies. At least not the unborn kind.
Diogenes wades in on the matter:
You can't say that the computer "chose" to ask about adoption, because computers don't really make choices. The "adoption" suggestion was the end result of an algorithm. The Amazon search engine had made a complicated series of dry, mathematical calculations, reflecting the choices made by thousands of users-- many of whom were, no doubt, women facing unexpected pregnancies.
Yeah, and now one wonders what about their rights. Or is it that they don't have any since they might just make the politically incorrect decision to let their baby live?
Under pressure from the abortion lobby, Amazon has altered the terms of the search, and the "adoption" suggestion no longer pops up in response to an "abortion" query. This is another victory for the people who describe themselves as "pro-choice," while doing their best to restrict the "choices" of which women-- and, now, even computers-- are aware.
The Grim Reaper strikes again.
Since Amazon has demonstrated they are willing to bend to pressure, maybe a little Christian pressure on the side of the rights of unborn babies would persuade them to come back to the original arrangement?
