1264 Shig Shag

I commented recently on the CDC study on the safety of American Pools. It wasn’t good. But as I was reading the article that prompted my commentary, an interesting sideline on today’s technology emerged.
The original article was on ABC News dot com. Like most news sites, the ads that appear near the article have been algorithm-ed in such a way that they have some relevance to the content of the article.
This is supposedly the wonderful new technology of target marketing. A computer decides what’s relevant in the article and places an ad that ties in somehow, tricking your brain into getting the equivalent of two advertising messages. Or at least one reinforced one.
Unfortunately, the ad they picked with “nasty-sicknesses-you-get-in-pools” was for a cruise ship company. And the deck of the massive cruise ship in the ad very obviously had swimming pools on it.
Worse, the stories of entire cruise ships coming down with massive infections were only too recent in my memory.
So the algorithm that decided this ad also displayed the thing that computers still lack—judgment.
Or possibly taste.
Then again, ABC wasn’t that good in the judgment department either. When referring to the disease shigella, they hyperlinked the word.
I know they were trying to be hip, modern, and helpful. But when I clicked the link, it went to Wikipedia. Um, how about a medical website? Wikipedia, though useful, is still riddled with inaccuracies. ABC News, of all people, should know it’s not the most reliable source.
I should hurry to Wikipedia right now and post that Shigella was a 60s dance, briefly popular between the Mashed Potato and the Watusi. See how long it takes before it’s taken down...
Technology’s fun, but technological practical jokes are funner.
America, ya gotta love it.