sonder

S?nder

sonder (n.)

the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own¹

⚡ TL;DR

Internet search shows us what we consume. Sonder shows us what we miss out on. We assess the opportunity cost of (the status-quo in) internet search.

Our access to knowledge is biased by public private algorithms, trained on diverse mainstream data, intended to maximize representation consumption. This robs us of the choice to understand those who think and learn differently. Sonder is an attempt to make our lack of choice explicit. To at least be mindful of our filter bubbles, if not break them.

Current work on Sonder spans two dimensions:

• ⚖️ Balance: Assess (in)completeness in knowledge as we search the web. Balance relevance with diversity.
• Trends: Highlight (in)completeness in global web, news, wiki, and social media trends.

? Glimpses

⚖️ Balance

Latent knowledge summary for search query

Latent sentiment

Latent geographies

Latent carbon cost

Experimental Analysis of Behavior Changes Induced

Trends

Global sentiment trends (Web search)

Global sentiment trends (News search)

? Algorithms

Preliminary details here.

? Awards

• Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Fellowship
• Stanford Data Science Scholarship
• Design Challenge Research Award, Stanford University
• Karr Fellowship, Stanford University
• Digital Learning Design Challenge Grant, Stanford University

? Maintainer

• Saurabh Khanna

Sonder is open-source and envisioned as a nonprofit. Reach out to join forces.

Contribution covenant here.

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1 Diction credit: John Koenig ↩