Fahrenheit 240

In 2001, Google launched a new feature supposed to improve search results: Google Stop Words. A list of 174 words the search engine disregards every time they are being typed in the search bar, Google Stop Words helps the software to provide more precise results by ignoring unspecific words. To give an example of how much of our language is being curated by Google Stop Words, Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 was ran through this filter, erasing every term Google would leave out of consideration, which deleted 47% of the text. As words got erased, new connections between the remaining ones were made possible, transforming the narrative nature of the original novel into a book of poems, Fahrenheit 240.