shroedi.htm: How to search the web, by fravia+ The Schroedinger search

~ The Schroedinger search ~

				The Schroedinger search

Version february 2000

This is still in fieri...

The "Schroedinger" search effect

The Schroedinger cat and our searching labs
The very moment we start one of these labs, of course, a lot of people are going to begin searching around for the same (or analoguous) subjects. If you believe that this activity will not influence the quarries, think again. Our activities influence not only the search engines (that of course take note of every search, that's what they have been built and offered 'for free' for: to gather datas and use them) even the TARGETS we are searching for. Such a peculiar state of affairs would be a modest example of a Schroedinger cat.
I quote: "Schroedinger cat states are extremely fragile. Any interaction with the surroundings will destroy the superposition and the target collapses into a single entity (becomes ``decoherent''). As the separation is made larger, the cat state becomes more fragile; this is interpreted as the reason such states are never seen in the larger world of common experience.". I believe this applies to Web-searches as well.
While the Schroedinger Cat examples are used in Quantum phisic when considering the possibility that something could be made to be both dead and alive at the same time, what I am referring to here, is the fact that by interacting with the web you "move" the parameters of your very search. The more you search for a specific target (or the more people are searching it) the more "awareness" of your query you have, be it from bots or from humans. A classical example is the interpretation of searching patterns in order to attarct people to a specific site, used by 'first position' commercial spammers on all search engines.
It would be nice if we could perform "non disturbing" workshops. But the sheer mass of people searching again and again for the same specific targets listed on each workshop has effects on those targets: to use the examples of the first three classrooms: after all trampling around by the searchers that read these pages Humphrey's museum may close, nn's useful proxies pages may disappear and Giglio's beloved Redhead pictures may be not so difficult to find any more.

of course this is still in fieri...