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Megan Garber

Megan Garber - Megan Garber is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She was formerly an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab, where she wrote about innovations in the media.

Google Psyche: Autocomplete for 'The Internet Is Not ...'

By Megan Garber
Jan 23 2012, 10:50 AM ET Comment

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Last week, we looked at what the Internet is (a playground, boring, made of cats) and what it isn't (working, fun anymore, real). Today -- with apologies to the apostrophe -- we'll consider what the Internet is not

And: It is not a big truck, guys. To repeat: Not a big truck.

What it is, though, according to autocomplete, is a pair of YouTube videos that, their titles notwithstanding, actually hint at what the web's all about: creativity, irreverence, and, finally, a desire for connection.



Google Psyche is an exploration of the stories that the world's Internet searches tell. The company's autocomplete algorithm predicts the word a random web searcher is most likely to type next, providing a statistical probe for our collective consciousness.



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