Fun with Johnson-Eilola?

For my blog this week, I tried assignment #2 in Johnson-Eilola's chapter. Before I comment on that though, I would like to mention that the information throughout the chapter dealing with the marketing of material now was disheartening. I don't like thinking of writing as an economic commodity with capitalist goals. It made me feel "dirty." Anyone else disturbed by this thought? However, back to the actual assignment; I must admit that it was fun and interesting to an extent, but I am still not sure how to really apply it to my classroom since I am from the old-school group of people who tend to be skeptical of random Internet searches. Anyway, here is a brief summary of the three topics I chose to search first on Google: dream visions, Dracula, and elephants (I can explain my choices to anyone who cares. I know they sound a bit warped). Anyway...

For dream visions, there were no sponsored sites on the page and the top few hits were extremely varied. Overall, there were 1,800,000 hits, but the top ones ranged from dream interpretation, to angelic encounters, to erotic/porn sites. I am not sure what this says about our culture other than we have varied ideas when it comes to dreams, none of which seem very academic (which is a shame since dream vision is a genre of medieval poetry). I am glad to say that the erotic site was 3rd and not 1st. I take some comfort in that. I also found it interesting that there were no other relevant sites listed at the bottom, like the search engine was at a loss as to how to link dream visions to other areas.

For Dracula, there was a sponsored link on the second day I looked, but not on the first. Many other relevant sites were listed (most dealing with Bram Stoker and vampires of course). My main interesting find was that the top two hits (out of 14,000,000!!!) were both to wikipedia. I am always a bit skeptical about wikipedia since I am not sure "anyone" should be an expert. Anyway, the other top hits mostly dealt with movies and books (at least it was a bit more academic than dream visions, although the one about Coppola's direction included how he yelled "whore" and "slut" during the scene where Van Helsing catches Mina--we, as a culture seem to be obsessed with sex).

For elephants, there were a whopping 14,000,000 hits (same as Dracula, how ironic), most of which dealt with nature and Africa. Many related searches were listed at the bottom. I was surprised that this was the only one of my three searches which included many sponsored sites (mostly to buy something or contribute to the preservation of these animals). There was actually a link to ebay, which I always expect to see no matter what the subject. I didn't pursue that link to see if one can buy live elephants on the site, but I wouldn't be surprised. This subject actually used up most of the screen whereas the other two left a lot of white space. I don't know what that means other than this subject may be more normal than my other two.

Overall, I am not sure what I learned from the assignment since I kind of expected the results I received (other than the erotic dream vision one). I am glad I took the opportunity to do the search assignment, but I feel it only confirmed my feelings that one should not do research randomly on the web.