The machine is using “us,” or at least those who supply free content to websites: photos, videos, clips, comments which add $$s to the coffers - why waste money hiring professionals, when amateurs (such as myself) give it away for free. It’s like broadcast media when they request videos and ideas from the public. It’s amazing how much of labor people give away. I wonder what the labor costs savings are each year as we obediently bus our own tables at restaurants and give away our intellectual and creative output.

Who is the matrix would be my question?

That was truly trump-alicious!!
corporatejesus.blogspot.com

While this is a pretty darn brilliant piece, I have trouble with the notion that we “teach” the machine.  It’s simplistic and self-defeating to look at the internet without a critical eye, that is, without acknowledging that it guides our actions.  Hypertext is a way of *telling* us where we can move and where we should seek information, acting as an often unquestioned authority.  And every time we heed the link’s advice and follow it, we give google another reason to tell us that it’s authoritative, by moving it up in search results.  So, by all means, let’s mold the internet to serve our own purposes, but let’s not be so deluded as to think there aren’t people behind the code, telling it where to lead us.  (Lev Manovich wrote some great stuff on this in his Language of New Media, admittedly a bit old by now)...to which I now guide you:

http://www.manovich.net/LNM/index.html

Wow! “In a dark and threatening universe, love may be the only, or best, light.” -Anthony DiNiro