As a follow-up to the Deep Search symposium, held in Vienna, Austria on November 8, 2008, The World Information Institute has now issued the book Deep Search: The Politics of Search Beyond Google and will be officially launched at the Society of the Query conference.

The volume, edited by Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder, is a collection of 13 texts that investigate the social and political dimensions of Web search and addresses urgent issues of culture, context and classification in information systems. Article authors are Konrad Becker, Robert Darnton, Paul Duguid, Joris van Hoboken, Claire Lobet-Maris, Geert Lovink, Lev Manovich, Katja Mayer, Metahaven, Matteo Pasquinelli, Bernhard Rieder, Theo Röhle, Richard Rogers, and Felix Stalder & Christine Mayer.

Last Wednesday Desiree de Jong posted a nice piece on the Masters of Media blog (the New Media M.A. student research blog of the University of Amsterdam) addressing some of the important issues central to the Society of The Query conference. I’ve taken the liberty of reposting it on this blog.

Author: Desiree de Jong
Source: mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl

On the website googlizationofeverything.com, theorist Siva Vaidhyanathan states that the current web is dominated in several ways by search engine Google. Google related sites and ‘Googleware’ like Google Books and Google Earth and the video channel YouTube. In a lot of countries, Google is by far the most used search engine; in the Netherlands, Google controls even more than 95 percent of the Web search market. Because of this leading position of Google and the fact that a lot of internet users take the search engine as their primer source for finding online information, questions about the power of Google as a search engine can be asked. Google has several ways to determine which search results show up when one’s typing a search term, but who says these results are actually in the right order? And off course, what is the ‘right’ order here? Theorist Pierre Lévy states that the web can be seen as the ultimate example of collective intelligence, because: “No one know everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity” (1) . Thus, not only can people use the internet for their own purposes, but they also shape it when making websites or add content to existing ones. The search results given by Google are a reflection of these inputs, and can thus be seen as a reflection of collective knowledge. People using Google also take for granted that Google is still functioning in such a way, that it can be trusted as being an apparatus reflecting collective knowledge. But since Google uses adverts and became more commercialized, this idea isn’t that natural anymore.

The fact that Google owns so many internet services also plays a part in this idea. Someone who is using, for example, Google Mail, can find implications of this when searching on Google itself. Google can then not only track the interests of this user from the search terms he or she types, but also by tracking data from mails in the Gmail account. This way, the Google adverts showing up when searching or when checking mail fit in more and more with the interests of the user in a more accurate way. The question here is, though: is this user interested in having adverts in his mailbox about topics he likes? Or must this ‘Googlization of interests’ be seen as a privacy issue, since the user is in the first place not asking for this behaviour of Google?

Maybe a solution for these issues can be found in alternative search engines. More and more of these show up, and they seem to be there not only to tease Google in fighting its leading position but also because they search the web in a different way. Microsoft earlier this year came up with Bing, a search engine that has several additional search functions. When, for instance one fills in the search term ‘cat’, in Google this will lead to a lists with websites only, while Bing also categorizes the search results, in ‘cat health’, ‘cat care’, and so on. Even though with the introduction of Bing Microsoft did not literally state it wants to compete with Google, it is said that it is after all introduced for this purpose and some people even claim the name Bing to be an abbreviation of ‘But It’s Not Google‘.

Besides Bing, there are several alternative search engines that have a different focus on the way they search the web. Examples like Tweetmeme and Topsy focus on the content of tweets. Topsy even states at its homepage a list of ‘trending topics’, topics that are at that moment stated often in tweets and therefore probably up-to-date and interesting. According to some, this way of searching leads to more interesting or at least more original answers than Bing does, when compared to Google. Kevin Rose states the Topsy site to be “kinda like google pagerank applied to twitter users”. The slogan of another search engine, OneRiot, even states it is the “Realtime Search for the Realtime Web”. It’s thus more up-to-date than Google, since it also uses tweets and other blog postings. Other similar search engines are Scoopler and Collecta.

These new engines may still be optimized, and maybe it would be an idea to have a search engine that combines both ‘regular’ sites and (micro)blogs in a perfect manner. But it’s interesting to see how they have all emphasize the role of (micro)blogs. While Google puts a lot of effort in wondering which website is the appropriate one to put on top of its search engines, these alternatives have a different method because they take the individual person, writing his blog or tweet, as the basis of searching. Whereas on Google the role of power can be disputed since it has become so commercial, on these search engine sites it seems as if the individual is important – and thus, the search results can in someway be seen as a more pure form of collective knowledge and intelligence. Henry Jenkins quotes Lévy as well to show that in the digital age “collective intelligence can be seen as an alternative source of media power. (..) Right now, we are mostly using this collective power through our recreational life, but soon we will be deploying those skills for more “serious” purposes.” (2). One of those serious purposes can be found in these new search engines. Even though they’re not that known yet, they probably will be in future. Users of Twitter and other (micro)blogs will then become more aware of them as well and more conscious of the fact that these search engines track their own tweets or messages to provide an alternative answer to Google. The bloggers can write their messages in a more ’search engine-attractive’ way as well, that is, for example by using clear key words in their tweets or blogs (this already takes place as well). Search engines can then more easily use their tweets to provide useful information and the idea of collective intelligence can be put in practice in these search engines.

Universal availability of information is difficult without being responsive to local condition, but in including national rationales, different views on what is considered harmful information are introduced. A much heard outcry of critics of Google’s censorship practices in China is that one only need to search for keywords such as “Tiananmen Square” in both Google.com and Google.ch, and see in one of them many iconic images of protesters and the crackdown itself and in the other tourist pictures of the square lighted up at night and happy Chinese couples posing before it.

Although claims about China’s violation of human rights seem unquestionable, it is ultimately a political and social issue and not a technological one. Basing arguments about Chinese repressive practices on accessibility to Google search result, or more generally, what is presented in the search results, is problematic and fails to look at what Google is. The nature of Google’s search results is based on popularity vote and thus can be seen as a reflection of the implicit recommendation of the dominant Web users. Although Google’s algorithm has often been heralded as democratic, receiving dominance through number of inlinks (also referred to as votes), not all sources are treated equal; a link, although being a popularity vote, does not necessarily mean an agreement on principles. For most part of the Web’s history the dominant users on the Web were western users, and thus what is reflected in the Google search results might not be a reflection of Chinese users and their opinions. If it was, it might be insightful to think about whether criticism about Tiananmen Square would surface if the search results included all the voices of the Chinese users. Maybe more importantly in relation to the Chinese identity, would the majority of the user like to have such a national drama be represented on the top of the Google results, for the entire world to see? What does it say about the state of local social and political issues when they are not reflected in a global publishing platform such as Google?

These questions are hard to answer, but what is clear is that at this point in time the voices of the Chinese users might not be represented equally in the search results. Partially this is due to the fact the Chinese user, although large in numbers, is still the new kid on the block. Another reason is that not all voices are heard, not all the different views on reality are being allowed a place in the online debate. But assuming for the moment that Google would be able to operate the way they think is best, operating according to their mission statement, would those voices be reflected in the search results? Keeping the analysis close to home, the question could become whether or not the search results we encounter are a reflection all our voices.

Richard Rogers in ‘The Googlization Question, and the Inculpable Engine’, looked at the search results for queries concerning important western political and social issues and found that rather then providing a collision space of alternate account of realty, something you might expect in a democratic society, Google furnished the familiar, it literally returns what you would expect. The search results follow mainstream storylines, issues raised in mainstream media, who have been repeated frequently on television, made up the top of search engine results. For Rogers Google is a status-authoring device and explains that:

Given all the pages that do reference a key word, the search engine delivers those ‘deserving’ to be listed as the top sources. Thus, apart from seeing the source set as the story, one also may view the engine results as telling a second kind of story — the current status of the topic or issue in question through the organizations currently representing it, on the record, in the engine returns.

Seeing the Google search engine as producing information that represents the diverse sets of opinions needed for true democratic debate (if we for the moment assume this is at all possible through media) thus ignores the way the technology operates. It is not so much Google search engine serving a misleading presentation of facts, but more so a misunderstanding of what it is. The search results are returning exactly what could be expected and the service works just fine. In a media saturated environment it should not be surprising that what is reflected in a service based on popularity votes is a reflection of issues and opinions brought up by the dominant media. Given the dominance of mainstream media in the Google results it seems a plausible assumption that a similar situation would occur in China. Given that the mainstream media operate under the same self-censorship regulations as Google.ch has to abide to, a free Google might change less then one might assume. In the act of trying to free the Chinese people from the oppressive governmental censorship, western users might be loosing sight on how their own system is reproducing biased narratives or at least return only a selection of a very particular reality.

In the article previously re-posted here, Clive Thompson from the New York Times spoke to a Internet executive highlighting the “distorted universe” the west believe the Chinese people are being presented and wonders:

What happens to people’s worldviews when they do a Google search for Falun Gong and almost exclusively find sites opposed to it, as would happen today on google.cn? Perhaps they would trust Google’s authority and assume there is nothing to be found.

Thompson reflects on this and states:

Perhaps the distorted universe is less of a problem in China, because — as many Chinese citizens told me — the Chinese people long ago learned to read past the distortions of Communist propaganda and media control.

What happens when we read Thompson’s conclusion slightly different? What if the western faith in technology and information, in the belief that the information returned are all the voices, that universal access to al information will change complicated social issues, have made us more blind to the constructedness of our own reality then the Chinese to theirs? In the act of trying to free a country of its oppressive regime by providing them access to information, we assume they are blind to something they have been accustomed to for decades and ignore our own blindness.

Let’s stop searching and start questioning…

Many will remember August 2006 when US Internet service provider AOL released sensitive user data, including 20 million Web search queries from 650,000 AOL users, on its research website. If not, this article on TechCrunch, written two days after the release, captures some of the surrounding buzz. While the actual user names had been anonimized by AOL, the vast amount of user queries captured during a three-month period, provided more than enough information for analysts of various kinds to run wild with. It took three days for AOL to remove the original file by which time copies existed all over the Web. Privacy advocates had commented on AOL’s rather traditional concept of ‘personally identifiable data’ as the bits and pieces of information in single user queries could easily be ‘mosaiced’ together and in many cases lead to actual identification.

The data released by AOL has not only inspired activists and marketers, but also artists to create works based on users search history. After a 2008 theater play called User 927, 2009 has seen the release of I Love Alaska, a series of minimovies by Lernert Engelberts & Sander Plug, commissioned by the Dutch Submarine Channel. In contrast to the ‘theatrical thriller’ User 927, AOL user 711391 features as the protagonist in a disquieting and sober film that uses only imagery of Alaska and the actual user queries (pronounced by an emotionless computer voice) by date to build an image of three months in the life of a middle-aged woman from Houston, Texas. The creators’ website states: “Her unique style of phrasing combined with her putting her ideas, convictions and obsessions into AOL’s search engine, turn her personal story into a disconcerting novel of sorts.” The complete series can be watched online at minimovies.org.

Trailer: