Something scary about HSC timetables

15 Jun 2005

Despite more than 60,000 students in NSW doing their HSC this year, the first three personal timetables listed when a Google search for “HSC timetable” is conducted are those of people known to me. My timetable is ranking highest, probably because of incoming links and the relative freshness of information, then Dale’s from last year (ranked not far below, probably because of relative age of the document), then, on the next page, Ben’s timetable posted a few days ago – I’d imagine because of incoming links, though the fact it’s not in a table may have something to do with it.

Does that strike anyone else as scary? I’m so sure we can’t be the only people in the state (of approximately 6.6 million people) to have posted their timetables online! And, if we are, that we all know each other directly – it’s a scary extrapolation of the idea of a “digerati” into a broader context! Have we formed our own élite? Does that make us relatively “heard” voices in this global community?

Call this an overreaction to search engine optimisation if you will, but I think it’s significant that three students (or ex-students) in the state who all know each other can rank so highly on a term hardly common to them alone – there is a candidature of approximately 60,000 students, and then there are the relatives and friends of these people to consider. Don’t laugh at this comment too hard, but where are the LiveJournal users on the first two pages? Certainly, someone must have posted such information, or, at the very least, a string referring to the same, on their own website.

“Democracy” on the web takes on a new tone when viewed like this. Creation of some compelling content in a semantic framework apparently entitles one to a greater voice on any issue. There are technical limitations to doing it any other way, of course – but perhaps this suggests that “the web” isn’t quite so democratic as it has often been heralded.