there was an op-ed piece in the times recently that cautioned against using the internet as a model for governmental regulation of the media because dominance by the few there is even more pronounced than in the convential media. something like the top three websites have as many hits as the next fifteen combined while the top three conventional media conglomerates are as big as the next ten.

the article noted that part of the reason for this on the internet is that search engines like google list websites according to popularity within their category, which of course, just reinforces their prominence.

is this a valid metaphorical use of the heisenberg uncertainty principle. the original applies to the bizarre contingency of quantum material. here a thing is a piece of matter, here an energy wave and the principle says that the act of observing affects the state we're seeing.

i once read that principle was analgous to an attempt to take the temperature of a glass of water by sticking a thermometer in it. the act of doing that changes the temperature of the water at some level far to the right of the decimal point, but still changes it so that ontologically we can never really know the "real" temperature of the water.

obviously the usage as applied to google is by no means precise but itsn't it true, isn't it the point of that op-ed piece that google's act of measuring affects the measurement?

-benjamin harris