Re: nettime [SPAM] Re: tensions within the bay area elites

2014-05-13 Thread James Barrett 
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 
Drha ha)

/James


James Barrett
PhD Candidate/Adjunct
Department of Language Studies/HUMlab
Umeå University
Sweden
http://about.me/James.G.Barrett



From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org [nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On 
Behalf Of michael gurstein [gurst...@gmail.com]
Sent: 13 May 2014 07:31
To: nettim...@kein.org
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...
 ...


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Re: nettime [SPAM] Re: tensions within the bay area elites

2014-05-12 Thread michael gurstein 
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...

In a blogpost I did about a year ago, I was pointing to Google's victory in
an anti-trust action which was being interpreted as a victory for free
speech; and arguing that the more significant risk was likely to come from
Google's impact on Freedom of thought as in Google's algorithms have to
be understood at the level of epistemology i.e. from the perspective of
their role (in fact, intervention) in framing our underlying knowledge,
understanding, justified belief about the nature of the world.  

http://tinyurl.com/aokqzsl

Now that Google's halo is a wee bit dented some deeper reflection on what
Google might, through its search algorithms, be doing to our underlying
frameworks of knowledge--either inadvertently by structuring them in pursuit
of its commercial goals or purposefully by, for example, following the
direction of its friends in the US State Department--might be in order; and
perhaps even more usefully some thought on what might be done about this.

M

-Original Message-

From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org
[mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of Florian Cramer
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2014 9:38 PM
To: nettim...@kein.org
Subject: [SPAM] Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 5:36 PM, Hans de Zwart hans.dezw...@bof.nl wrote:

 Just look at the graph displaying Google's DC lobbying investment and 
 you will instantly realise that Google is not the same Google that it 
 was a decade ago.

To chime in here: If Facebook qualifies as scary, then Google does even
more so. Lately, the company has been aggressively ventured into
military-industrial territory with its recent investments into robotics,
artificial intelligence, augmented reality and drone technology.
 ...


!DSPAM:2676,53718551308591646260386!


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