扔掉谷歌 讓我們搜點有趣的結果

The moment Google announced it was letting users download their entire search histories, I clicked — and downloaded a cache of 128,948 searches, the sum total of my last 12 years, five months, one week and three days onLine. I fully expected to be reminded of those repeated requests for ‘‘Finnish gymnastics’’ and ‘‘comorbidity of insomnia and brain lesioning,’’ but what surprised me was how regularly I searched for other search engines: ‘‘alternative search engines,’’ ‘‘alt search engines,’’ ‘‘search engines that aren’t Google,’’ ‘‘search engines better than Google.’’

谷歌(Google)剛一宣佈用戶可以下載完整的歷史搜索記錄，我就去點了——於是下載了128948條搜索緩存，這是我過去總在網時長——12年5個月1周零3天——的搜索量。我期待着被一些重複的詞條提醒：“芬蘭體操”、“失眠共病與腦損傷”。然而讓我感到驚訝的是，我搜索其他搜索引擎的頻率竟如此之高：“其他搜索引擎”、“替代搜索引擎”、“除谷歌以外的搜索引擎”、“比谷歌好用的搜索引擎”。

That’s how I first found my way to Mystery Google, a site that within a year of its introduction in 2009 rebranded itself as Mystery Seeker, the name under which it still operates. The site, in any iteration, has always been an enigma. It’s not clear who founded it, or who runs it, or whether it changed its name because Google threatened legal action or just acquired the domain. By contrast, what the site does is remarkably transparent. You type what you please and click Search; what you get in return are the results for the last query given to the site.

我就是這樣發現了“Mystery Google”。它上線於2009年，在不到一年時間裏重新做了品牌推廣，更名爲“Mystery Seeker”，現在也還叫這個名字。不管叫什麼，這個網站一直都是一個謎。創建它的人未知，運營它的人未知，更不知道更名是否是迫於谷歌的法律威脅，還是谷歌吞掉了這個域名。與此相反的是，這個網站的工作機制很容易理解。用戶隨便敲進去什麼喜歡的東西，點擊“搜索”，收到的結果是網站收到的最後一個搜索請求的結果。

For example, just now I typed “Who runs Mystery Seeker?” and received results for ‘‘lesbian kittens’’ — apparently the request of the user just before me. The site is an exercise in collective perversion, an antisocial yet communitarian prank. You have to give before you receive, so while I began every session trying to baffle the subsequent seeker, I always ended up off-site, having been outclassed by a stranger: pages on Lincoln-assassination conspiracy theories, Nazi time travel, Mesoamerican apocalypse prophecies and, inevitably, pornography.

舉個例子，現在，我打入“運營Mystery Seeker的人是誰？”，收到的結果是關於“同性戀小母貓”的搜索內容——顯然，我之前的一個用戶搜索了這個詞條。這個網站是一個集體變態下的行爲，一種反社會但又彼此相交流的惡作劇。收到結果之前，你必須給予結果，每次我開始想要給下一個搜索者製造點困惑，我都被陌生人比下去，以出局收場：刺殺林肯陰謀論的文獻資料，穿越到納粹，中美洲末日預言，還有無法避免地，色情。

Whenever the results I got were smutty, or racist, I’d respond — I flattered myself that I was responding — by searching for ‘‘feminism’’ or ‘‘peculiar institution.’’ If I got results pertaining to ‘‘Mad Men’’ or ‘‘The Office,’’ the next search I’d log would be for Shostakovich or Goya. These were feeble, futile gestures, of course, self-congratulatory exercises in compensatory karma. I was telling my successor to get some culture. I should’ve been telling myself to get a life.

只要得到葷一點的結果，或者種族主義的，我都會迴應——我讓自己覺得我是在迴應——通過搜索“女性主義”或者“奴隸制度”。如果我得到了《廣告狂人》(Mad Men)和《辦公室》(The Office)的搜索結果，我的下一條搜索會是“肖斯塔科維奇”或“戈雅”。這些是羸弱而又無意義的舉動，當然，也是一種自吹自擂的自作自受。我是要告訴我的下一位，有點文化吧。其實我也應該告訴自己，有點生活吧。

At the same time, I was investigating the more practical, or just more traditional, alternatives to Google: Bing (owned by Microsoft), Yahoo (operated by Google back then and by Bing now), (an aggregator of Yahoo/Bing, Google and others) and newer sites like DuckDuckGo and IxQuick (which don’t track your search history), Gibiru and Unbubble (which don’t censor results) and Wolfram Alpha (which curates results).

與此同時，我確實在深入研究更加實用，或者說更加傳統的谷歌替代品：微軟所有的必應(Bing)，以前由谷歌運營而現在歸於必應的雅虎(Yahoo)，雅虎、必應、谷歌和其他引擎的集合品，還有一些新一點的網站，如DuckDuckGo和IxQuick。IxQuick不記載用戶的搜索歷史，另外還有Gibiru和Unbubble，不審查結果審查，以及對結果進行編排處理Wolfram Alpha。

They were all too organized, too logical — the results were all the same, with only slight differences in the order of their presentation. It seemed to me that the Search Engine of Tomorow couldn’t be concerned with the best way to find what users were searching for, but with the best way to find what users didn’t even know they were searching for.

不過這些都太過組織化、邏輯化，它們的搜索結果都差不多，僅在展示的順序上有細微差別。對我來說，未來的搜索引擎不是去攙和着研究什麼最好的方式，以知道用戶在搜索什麼，而是去研究用戶自己都不知道他們在搜索的東西。

Among the more entertaining challengers was : You type in a word and choose a category — Archetypes, Colors, Emotions — from which the site selects its own word to search in tandem. For instance, I typed in ‘‘Guantánamo’’ and chose the category Jargon Words; the site appended the word ‘‘parse.’’ The results of this collaboration comprised two types of hits: op-eds about the effects of closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and op-eds about the effects of keeping it open. Both sides found the future difficult to parse.

存在一些更具娛樂精神的挑戰者，是其中之一：你敲進去一個詞，選擇一個種類——原型，顏色，情緒——從你選擇的種類裏，這個網站會選擇它自己的關鍵詞來疊加搜索。比如，我就敲進去“關塔那摩”，然後選擇“行業術語”這個種類；網站會挑選“分析”。這樣的結果是兩個，一個是關閉關塔那摩監獄的觀點，另一個是開放的觀點。兩邊都覺得未來很難分析。

elides the top 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 or one million results of your search, providing more direct connection to less popular chatter. determines pertinence by impertinence: Search for “surrealism,” and get sites for the I.C.B.E. (the International Center for Bathroom Etiquette) and an online pregnancy test; search for “socialism,” get sites called Corpses for Sale or Create Farts, and feel proud that in America even irrelevancy is calculated — and while that irrelevancy is free, its method of calculation is proprietary.

則會忽略用戶搜索結果的前100、1000、10000、10000或1000000個，這樣，它提供了一種聯繫，讓用戶接觸到不那麼流行的話語材料。則以不合理性定義合理性：搜索“超現實主義”，得到國際洗手間禮儀中心(the International Center for Bathroom Etiquette)，還有，一個線上懷孕測試；搜索“社會主義”，得到“待售死屍”(Corpses for Sale)和“制屁”(Create Farts)網站，然後你還會感到驕傲，因爲在美國，連非相關結果都被計算了。雖然非相關結果是免費的，但這種計算方法是有專利的。

Today, most search engines can differentiate among the meanings of “free,” though I’m not always convinced their users can. Google might cost nothing to use, but it compiles dossiers on consumers that it charges advertisers to access. The hope, and the pleasure, of tinkering around with nonsensical search engines has always been the generation of nonsensical data: a man (me?) clicking links for what he doesn’t need or want (latex lederhosen?) can’t be marketed to. There was joy in this, a pubescent pride in having jammed the system and evaded its consequences. This was recreation as political act — or so it seemed.

如今，許多搜索引擎都可以區別“免費”這個詞的多種含義，雖然我並不覺得他們的用戶都能分辨其中的差別。使用谷歌可能不會花任何錢，但谷歌整理了關於用戶的私密數據，並以這種檔案的接近性向廣告商要價。修改這些無意義的搜索結果的樂趣和希望在於，產生出無意義的數據：一個點擊了他並不需要或者想要（上膠的皮短褲？）的鏈接的男人（我？），無法成爲市場推廣的目標了。這其中自有快樂，就像是一種青春期時期的自豪，給系統添點堵，並逃離後果。也像是類似政治行爲的一種消遣——或者，看上去是吧。

But as I immersed myself in the workings of search as research for a novel, I became disabused of the idea. My mode of protest was too quixotic: A number of the alt-search engines I’ve mentioned are built on the Bing platform, or are ‘‘Powered by Google,’’ according to the tagline that such sites are required to display. After all, the biggest companies have the best algorithms; smaller sites merely engineer filters and tack their humor on.

不過，隨着我慢慢像爲一本小說做研究一樣沉浸在這些搜索的運行原理中，我開始不這麼信任這種想法了。我的反抗模式過於浮誇：從網站上被要求顯示的標語中可以看到，好幾個我提到的替代的搜索引擎，其實是在必應上建立的，或者由谷歌支持的。總之，最大的公司擁有最好的算法。小網站僅能夠做些過濾，然後融入他們自己的幽默。

Even if the joke was on me, I liked it all the same. Besides, it was worth it for the education. I enjoyed the laughs; let them enjoy the data.

就算我自己成了一個笑話，也還是樂此不疲。無論如何，這個過程總值得學習。我享受這些笑點，那麼，也讓那些人去享受他們的數據吧。