19.046 hegemonic Google and the state of the Internet

                Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 46.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Alexandre Enkerli <enkerli_at_gmail.com> (77)
         Subject: Hegemonic Google?

   [2] From: lachance_at_origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois (62)
                 Lachance)
         Subject: Internet not equal WWW Re: 19.027 Bell's access
                 everywhere

   [3] From: lachance_at_origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois (36)
                 Lachance)
         Subject: digest ... Re: 19.041 state of the Internet: what is
                 to be done

   [4] From: Joris van Zundert <joris.van.zundert_at_gmail.com> (14)
         Subject: Re: 19.041 state of the Internet: what is to be done

   [5] From: "FRANCOIS CROMPTON-ROBERTS" (21)
                 <francois_cr_at_btopenworld.com>
         Subject: Re: 19.041 state of the Internet: what is to be done

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 07:28:47 +0100
         From: Alexandre Enkerli <enkerli_at_gmail.com>
         Subject: Hegemonic Google?

In 19.022, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett pointed to a Wired article about
some European reactions to Google's digitization of books:
<http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,67482,00.html>.
The article mostly focuses on the old EU/US relationship, with the
(stereo)typical "French connection" (as evidenced by the rather silly
title: "Escargot? Oui. Google? Sacre Bleu"). Yet, there's a lot more that
can be said about the risks of a Google hegemony, including from a US
perspective.

Google benefits from an enviable position among technology corporations. It
might be perceived favorably by Cyber-geeks and newbies alike. Geeks like
its roots in their culture along with the emphasis on neat technologies.
Google has geek-appeal. Newbies enjoy the fact that they can lookup almost
anything and get some type of result that's relatively appropriate.
In terms of geek appeal, the following piece on Google's approach to
innovation is quite striking:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/19/google/index.php
Especially when we compare it to Microsoft's current approach to
innovation. Bazaar and Cathedral, you say? Geeks are better at ease in the
Bazaar. The Cathedral resonates of Globalisation, which people associate
with negative impact on society.

Google's reach is extending quite rapidly (noticed the new "portal" beta in
Google Labs?). Some people (including some geeks in North America and
elsewhere) are wondering if Google might not transform itself into
something dangerous. Yes, references to corruption through power (even in
Star Wars) are quite relevant to these people. The easiest reference is, of
course, Microsoft.

According to those views, Google has the potential to become too big. If
Google's "power" were "used for evil," the results could be quite damaging.
Naive? Sure. But this perspective has an impact on how people (geeks and
basic users alike) perceive Google.

Google's IPO has been the target of multiple comments from different
people. But perhaps the most interesting event in their recent history was
the launch of Gmail. Because of Gmail's targeted advertising based on
message content and given the ubiquitous cookie set by Google (which
maintains such information as prior searches), several people grew scared
of Google's potential for breach of privacy. Call it a "conspiracy theory"
and point to the tinfoil hat, but Google's once idyllic relationship to
geeks started to show signs of uneasiness.

To make matters worse, Google executives had been elusive in their answers
to privacy concerns and the threat of having Google actually sell some
private information about Gmail users should have been addressed more
directly. There's been some discussions of the issues with Gmail and
Google's latest April Fool's Day spoof referred to that "public relation
debacle" (as journalists probably conceived of some initial reactions to
Gmail): http://www.google.com/googlegulp/faq.html

Personally, I'd say that people at Google were simply naive in their
approach and they probably never had malicious intentions, that the
reaction about privacy concerns was aggravated by "the media," and that
Google maintains a good reputation. Yet the issue of Google's perception
remains slightly less settled than some might think.

Compare the situation with Microsoft, which several people call the "Evil
Empire" (funny how common "evil" is as an English word). Some people might
be fascinated with Bill Gates (or, at least, with his virtual wealth) and
some people probably see Microsoft products in a very positive light, but
the company itself is rarely seen in a very positive light. The common
explanation for this is that Microsoft is a near-monopoly and that it would
be hard to cherish a monopoly. Yet Google's "marketshare" among search
engine is quite close to that of Microsoft among desktop operating systems
and Google benefits from a much better reputation.

Is Google showing signs of The Hegemony?

Alexandre
http://dispar.blogspot.com/

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 07:29:40 +0100
         From: lachance_at_origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
         Subject: Internet not equal WWW Re: 19.027 Bell's access everywhere

Willard and Peter,

As Humanist 19:27 there appeared a message from Peter Pehrson of Written
By Hand. That message reached subscribers of Humanist via email
distribution. And the contents of that message can be accessed
subscribers and non-subscribers of Humanist via the archive housed on the
World Wide Web. Furthermore, in whole or in part, the contents of the
message can circulate again both by email or by hyperlink point via the
WWW. I am stressing this point -- the embeddedness of the World Wide Web
within / through the Internet -- to characterize qualities of the
"library" at one's fingertips.

Mr. Pehrson seems to imply that the imaginative universe of Mr. Bell
houses a library without librarians or patrons:

> Author Bell writes, "Today, a scholar in South Dakota, or Shanghai, or
> Albania--anywhere on earth with an Internet connection--has a research
> library at her fingertips."
>
> This is simply not the case. An awareness of current economic and physical
> conditions in the case of South Dakota demonstrates internet access is not
> so blithely obtainable as suggested. Ditto for Shanghai and Albania. And,
> the "research library" is often dead-end references to unavailable sources.

Where, except perhaps in a possible fictional world a la Borges,
are there no missing volumes, no misplaced materials, no inaccurate
catalogue entries, no misleading bibliographic references?

The quality of the (immediate) retrieval is not the measure of the
fingertip (or voice-activated) access. The Internet's mail protocols, its
discussion lists and its news groups as well as the Web allow people to be
in touch with people and ask about what they are looking for and to also
provide answers.

We sometimes forget that libraries are sites of connection. People, the
living and the dead, engage in conversation -- and not through some dream
of immedicacy. At one's finger tips is not the answer but the invitation
to question. It's about reaching not grabbing.

David Weinberger captures some of this ethos:

<quote>
We think of complex institutions and organizations as being like
well-oiled machines that work reliably and almost serenely so long as
their subordinate pieces perform their designated tasks. Then we go on the
Web, and the pieces are so loosely joined that frequently the links don't
work [...] But that's okay because the Web gets its value not from the
smoothness of its overall operation but from its abundance of small
nuggets that point to more small nuggets. And, most important, the Web is
binding not just pages but us human beings in new ways. We are the true
"small pieces" of the Web, and we are loosely joining ourselves in ways
that we're still inventing.
<cite>
David Weinberger
Small Pieces Loosely Joined (2002)
preface p. x
</cit></quote>

What Weinberger characterizes as novel, I see as existing in
pre-electronic times. However the multiplication of cycles of re-invention
offered by networked environments finds us querying the mastery of speed.
Faster will not get you more and more is not better. To find, to invent,
oneself takes faith, faith in the abilities of others to connect some of
the pieces and in their abilities to sort, shuffle and store. One's other
is a librarian. Fancy finding that figure here but as we say in French --
"a la retrouvaille" -- till next time.

--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/jardin
Skill may be the capacity to manipulate perceptions of knowledge.
Magic is.
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 07:30:19 +0100
         From: lachance_at_origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
         Subject: digest ... Re: 19.041 state of the Internet: what is to
be done
Willard,
You asked observed that
  > one cannot depend on messages being seen nowadays, although many have yet
  > to realize this. Who has time and stomach to go through even the most
  > abbreviated listing of spamming messages for the occasional message that
  > should not have been plucked out?
To which I place an other observation: some discussion lists provide a
digest format (a "chunking" of a few days worth of positings). Some users
subscribe to both the digest and the "regular" read and thereby managing
the adequate redundancy that helps one spot what one may have missed.
It's a habit from the pre-spam epoch where the flow of information was
often shaped by one's subscription habits.
On another note: robot exclusion can assist in controlling the harvesting
of email addresses. It also affects the automatic collection of URLs for
search engines.
On yet another note: is there a certain status symbol value to anti-spam
efforts such as the avoidance of all mailto links or the various ways of
segregating the elements of email addresses (for reassembly by some human
user)? Inversely is there a certain status symbol value to the persistence
of old-style email address treatment on the part of users accustomed to
scanning an inbox and trusting the sys admins to balance server loads and
deal with network drag? I, for one, given that I often work with dial-up
connections, am more concerned by network performance than by the presence
of those pesky spam messages.
Weeding, watering and planting :: spam plucking, reply generation and
initial postings. How does your garden grow?
Given the topoi of most advertising spam (sex, pharmaceuticals, and
finance), spam taps into a dream of potency. Ironically zapping or
filtering spam delivers a form of potency -- keeping one's garden neat and
tidy. I invite subscribers to meditate upon the gendered inflections in
much anti-spam discourse. Reminds one of the politics of housework.
   --
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/jardin
Skill may be the capacity to manipulate perceptions of knowledge.
Magic is.
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 07:30:47 +0100
         From: Joris van Zundert <joris.van.zundert_at_gmail.com>
         Subject: Re: 19.041 state of the Internet: what is to be done
  > To survive we've installed spam filters
  > that, with delicious irony, are acting as mechanised censors. As a result
  > one cannot depend on messages being seen nowadays, although many have yet
  > to realize this. Who has time and stomach to go through even the most
  > abbreviated listing of spamming messages for the occasional message that
  > should not have been plucked out?
With present day's spam filtering, would it actually not be quite hard to
write a message containing any 'Humanist-usefull' information in such a way
that it would end up in the spam trash bin? When does a message hit the
treshold? I can only imagine getting into trouble by quoting from a spam
message, let's say for example when I'm studying language corruption due to
spam. But other than that... Could be fun to try though?
y.s.,
Joris van Zundert
--[5]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 07:31:49 +0100
         From: "FRANCOIS CROMPTON-ROBERTS" <francois_cr_at_btopenworld.com>
         Subject: Re: 19.041 state of the Internet: what is to be done
Am I the oly one to see the irony in your Post Scriptum NB, Willard?
Surely if we know anything about robots it is that they are consistent.
Re-sending the message will cause the spam filter to cut in again ...
Best wishes,
Francois C-R
----- Original Message -----
... To survive we've installed spam filters that, with delicious irony,
are acting as mechanised censors. As a result one cannot depend on
messages being seen nowadays, although many have yet to realize this.
Who has time and stomach to go through even the most abbreviated listing
of spamming messages for the occasional message that should not have
been plucked out?
...
Yours,
WM
[NB: If you do not receive a reply within 24 hours please resend]
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Kay House, 7 Arundel Street |
London
WC2R 3DX | U.K. | +44 (0)20 7848-2784 fax: -2980 ||
willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/