I would like to recommend the work of my friend and collegue Astrid Mager here, regarding the ideological and socio-cultural implications of the Google-effect:
http://oeaw.academia.edu/AstridMager There is always ideology, and with an infocapitalist economy these are of course not lessened by the sorts of economies of scale with witness with Google: "Google has been blamed for its de facto monopolistic position on the search engine market, its exploitation of user data, its privacy violations, and, most recently, for possible collaborations with the US-American National Security Agency (NSA). However, blaming Google is not enough, as Mager suggests in this article. Rather than being ready-made, Google and its ‘algorithmic ideology’ are constantly negotiated in society. Drawing on her previous work Mager shows how the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ gets inscribed in Google’s technical Gestalt by way of social practices. Furthermore, I look at alternative search engines through the lens of ideology. Focusing on search projects like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, YaCy and Wolfram|Alpha Mager exemplifies that there are multiple ideologies at work. There are search engines that carry democratic values, the green ideology, the belief in the commons, and those that subject themselves to the scientific para-digm. In daily practice, however, the capitalist ideology appears to be hegemonic since 1) most users employ Google rather than alternative search engines, 2) a number of small search projects enter strategic alliances with big, commercial players, and 3) choosing a true alternative would require not only awareness and a certain amount of technical know-how, but also effort and patience on the part of users, as Mager finally discusses. " Astrid Mager, "In Search of Ideology" https://www.academia.edu/5717495/In_search_of_ideology._Socio-cultural_dimensions_of_Google_and_alternative_search_engines I suggest further reading of Dr. Mager's work (she would love me calling her Dr....ha ha) /James James Barrett PhD Candidate/Adjunct Department of Language Studies/HUMlab Umeå University Sweden http://about.me/James.G.Barrett ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein [[email protected]] Sent: 13 May 2014 07:31 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: <nettime> [SPAM] Re: tensions within the bay area elites Glad to see Google getting it's due but I'm wondering if the deeper significance and risk posed by Google isn't being a wee bit overlooked here... <...> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
