A friend shared this series of Google autocomplete search results on a social network, it contains screen captures of Google’s autocomplete feature along with a venn diagram produced from the resulting terms:

I was curious if I would get the same terms, so I tried it. As soon as I found that my results for “Why are Buddhists” were different in than the screen capture in the image above I decided to take more of my own samples. I tried out a few religions that came to mind off the top of my head. Here are the results of my autocomplete searches, taken today between 11:11 and 11:15:

Google autocomplete is described as an “algorithm” that “offers searches that might be similar to the one you’re typing.” Based on the description below of how they are produced, you may have different results when you search:

As you type, Google’s algorithm predicts and displays search queries based on other users’ search activities. These searches are algorithmically determined based on a number of purely objective factors (including popularity of search terms) without human intervention. All of the predicted queries shown have been typed previously by other Google users. The autocomplete dataset is updated frequently to offer fresh and rising search queries. In addition, if you’re signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, you may see search queries from relevant searches that you’ve done in the past.

The New York Times reports that prison libraries are being purged of religious books and other materials. The Bureau of Prisons is banning material that might “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

Of course this is absurd and I can’t even begin to imagine who is deciding what would “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize” and how to apply these criteria. Surely the entire Jewish and Christian Bible must be excluded – or is the Bureau of Prisons just assuming that there is no advocating or discriminatory content in the Bible. If so, they clearly haven’t read it. The Koran and the Bible both advocate violence in parts and peace in others. And so I can only conclude that this is an attempt to remove material that might inspire prisoners to rise up against the illegal and immoral system that has locked them up.

I wonder how much access to the internet prisoners have, if any. Could a case be made that access to cyberspace is a right for prisoners just as occasional access to the outdoors is?

In The Soul of Cyberspace Zaleski quotes Rabbi Yosef Y. Kazen, founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch Web site, description of his “Global Interactive Database of Good Deeds” in which users type in an act of goodness or kindness and a ‘vitrual menorah’ lights up:

“[this database adheres to] our perspective that the Internet is a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of swords into ploughshares”

The text referenced is: “And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaih 2:4, Neviim, The Tanakh)