What we ask Google

Ever wondered what goes through other people’s minds – their silly questions, their inner anxieties, their hopes and dreams?

In his new book, What we ask Google, Simon Rogers draws on two decades of aggregated Google search data. He examines what traditional search has revealed about humanity’s private fears, hopes and instincts, and asks what happens as we move from typing keywords into a search bar to asking Chat GPT fully formed questions.

Join us to hear Simon Rogers share insights from what is now the world’s largest dataset and learn that it offers a surprisingly hopeful picture of humankind.

Meet our speaker

Simon Rogers is Google’s Data Editor, leading a team of data journalists, analysts, and visualisers to tell stories with Google’s data. Previously, he was Twitter’s first ever Data Editor, and he is also the author of Facts Are Sacred (2013, Faber & Faber), based on the Guardian’s Datablog which he helped launch. A lecturer in Data Journalism at Medill-Northwestern University in San Francisco, he has received the Royal Statistical Society’s award for statistical excellence in journalism and been named Best UK Internet Journalist by the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.

LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of the London School of Economics and Political Science.