definition of random as according to wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance; "a random choice"; "bombs fell at random"; "random movements"


However, I think this is lacking in that I believe that random is more of a matter of perception. I believe that in order for something to be truly random it must be perceived by a different source. i.e. If rather that putting a definition here I had just stated "Mashed Potatoes" or some such, it would not have been truly random for me. I would have had to have made the choice to write something there, and while it might have been the first thought that came to my mind...some connection would have had to have been made between the need to write something random the mashed potatoes in my head. In this case it's easier for me to see the connection between random and mashed potatoes in my own head as it's something that I recall something in the past being random to me when someone said "mashed potatoes". However, you as the reader, would have no idea what I meant there, and it would have been random to you. Thus, for something to be truly random, the connections have to be made in someone else's head.

Thinking about this, I can relate this to the response to "Is Google Making us Stupid" in my following post in that if google was successful in directly attaching the algorithm and information to our brain, random itself would be a thing of the past, as everyones mind's would have access to the same information. That does raise the question, however, of how a person's personal experiences would be handled by the algorithm. I believe people would still have individual experiences, but "how would those be handled?", is what I mean to ask. If everyone was operating on the same database, would a person's personal experiences be enterred into and processed by algorithm? Would the information itself become a part of the greater database? If so, once a person had an experience, wouldn't everyone who had that experience or a similar experience after that be using the information from that first experience, and those after, to process what would have been a unique experience in their life?

Now that I wonder, is this process happening now? Since google is the primary search engine, and we are all under the thumb of the information that google decides to provide for our searches, are we being funneled into a certain thought process? The article has a part where a friend of the writer is quoted as saying that the way he thinks has changed due to the internet, so it's feasable at the very least. But is the way we think being standardized, or rather being made universal? I have asked a lot of questions, but the method I would probably use for gathering the answers to these questions would be google searching...so I dunno.