I’ve been told Google is the Devil and DuckDuckGo is the way, to go. What is your opinion on this?
Now for a short story.
About 15 years ago I used Metacrawler.com, which tended to return deep search results from any location on the net. I found a PDF from a company called Helix Marketing, that had been awarded a contract to turn whalley, a part of Surrey, BC, Canada, into the commercial hub of the GVRD (Greater Vancouver Regional District). This is where the Skytrain (like a monorail) ended in the east, and was the most gang controlled, drug/car theft/crime zone in the whole area. This PDF I found went into great detail about how the company proposed changing the whole region, to rain capital down on all the businesses involved. The document went into something called the “socialization of citizens”. I wrote a blog article about it when I was le_veritas on Liverjournal (big hint). The very next day the PDF was scrambled on my computer. The data was..encrypted, or…corrupt perhaps. Idk how that happened.
Anyways now you can’t find such deep-net information. You’re only able to skim the surface, and now that surface too, is being cleansed, bought and sold.
So my real question here, is how can I trust just another search engine? Also, can we create our own, or is there another way?
And finally, I’d like to reflect on the nature of informational investigation. Life isn’t something you save to look at later. Take the time, to make time, and when you make time, take the time. We must amass data, but to what aim, and can we confirm it?
Thank you for reading.
h/t joshua_ray