5/7 Questions - Kimia Preston

In the piece "Missed Connections: What Search Engines Say About Women", they discuss how “U.S. commercial search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing wield tremendous power in defining how information is indexed and prioritized”. While there are many search engines available, nothing has prevailed like Google has over other search engines. What is the greatest danger of having this one source?

As the information produced by search engines that we readily consume is clearly biased based on the Missed Connections reading, what are some of the ways that as consumers we can act to make change to prevent censorship and promote flow of trustworthy sources?

How was social media so influential for the promotion of the DREAM act? While social media has its advantages to enact social change, are there are downsides of this new form of technology within the realms of activism?

In the Catherine Ramirez piece, she writes about how the genre of science fiction has lent itself well to black and feminist writers because it forces people to think outside of the status quo and imagine a world completely different from the one that we know. What are some of the important ways that social justice issues are represented within this genre?