Swiss historian of technology David Gugerli talked about the culture of the serach society during his speech at the Society of the Query. Gugerli emphasizes how searching has become a crucial part in every part of society. The author of “Search Engines. The World as a database” (review here) exemplifies this by mentioning the U.S. TV Show CSI, where a team of forensic investigators tries to clarify homocide cases. For Gugerli a dead body in a CSI show represents a database full of traces. The investigators search for the different traces and recombine them in order to solve the criminal case. The whole process of searching becomes the main part of the CSI story, CSI depicts the world as a database.

Using this example David Gugerli leads the hearer to his observation that data management systems have become a crucial variable shaping our real social world. The usage of database management systems has become an instrument to produce and to influence social change, by those managing databases and by those using it. To understand the major significance of database management systems it is important to be aware of the history of databases which has produced the enormous flexibility of modern database systems.

The idea of databases serving as a pool full of endless information emerged in the 1960s because of the society becoming more complex and therefore producing more complex data. Databases at this time were only able to answer foreseen questions, they were build for the purpose of providing answers for certain questions. But the emerging idea was that databases should be able to give answers to unexpected questions and to recombine information.

Gugerli describes the theoretical work which emerged during the 1970s and enabled the development of databases able to provide answers to new questions. The main question people dealt with was how to separate the process of retrieving information from the process of storing information. Until this idea came up the programmers creating and feeding the databases were also the only people being able to use them and extract information of them.

Mathematician and database theorist Edgar F. „Ted“ Codd produced basic work for the development of the relational data base. His goal was to split the knowledge about how to use a data base from the knowledge about how a database is structured. To do this Codd contributed to the development of a search and query language (SEQUEL = Structured English Query Language). This language build the basis for the aim to enable access to databases to people not having knowledge about the architecture of the database and in this way took the power from the programmer.

Gugerli links this shift in database theory, which enabled a new way of asking and interpreting with ideas of critical french authors like Barthes, Derrida, Foucault. They stated that the interpretation of a text cannot be determined by the author beforehand, there is an interpretative flexibility. In Gugerli‘s point of view this flexibility also entered the database sciences. As a result of this shift there also emerge consequences for social reality: new organizational strucutres, new administration forms, new forms of allocation. Gugerli sees an example for these consequences in the modern 20th century enterprise using highly complex logistics, supply chain management and real time production for example. These forms are supported or even determined by database management systems.

Society of the Query conference: 13 – 14 November, Trouw Amsterdam in Amsterdam
With the Society of the Query conference -stop searching, start questioning-, the Institute of Network Cultures aims to critically reflect on the information society and the dominant role of the search engine in our culture. What does the dependency on the engine to manage the complex system of knowledge on the Internet mean? What alternatives exist? How can the increasingly centralized web be regulated? What is the future of interface design? By bringing together researchers, theorists and artists, the conference will examine the key issues that are emerging around web search, and contextualize developments within the fields of knowledge organization and information design.

Introduction to the Society of the Query conference
Search is the way we now live. At present, the reality of the information society is one in which we are increasingly confined to the use of information retrieval tools to create order and value in the vast amount of online data. Web search has taken over from (directory based) browsing and surfing as the dominant activity on the web. With this development, the search engine has become the main point of reference, one whose emphasis on efficiency and service tends to cloud the nature of both the underlying technology and (corporate) ideologies.

In what might be dubbed the ‘society of the query’, this conference asks what this dependency on tools to manage the complex system of knowledge on the Internet means for our culture. As the idea of a semantic web unfolds, the human versus artificial intelligence controversy is regarded with renewed urgency. The increasingly centralized computing grid invites critical questions about power distribution, governance, and diversity and accessibility of web content, while on the other hand promising alternatives to the dominant paradigm arise in P2P and open source initiatives. With large investments in media literacy, what role might politics and education play in establishing an informed and technologically literate user base?

This two-day Query conference aims to examine the key issues that are emerging around web search, and to contextualize developments within the fields of knowledge organization and information design. The Institute of Network Cultures aims to do so specifically by bringing together researchers, theorists and artists, creating room for speculation and open questions, as well as concrete projects and research. The questions this conference raises are:

• How does the idea of machine understanding influence the fields of knowledge organization and information retrieval?
• How is the legal framework surrounding search engines changing shape?
• Is Google’s increased ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of art and cultural practice?
• What influence does the existing hegemony of a few large search engines exert on the traditional flow of knowledge and the diversity and accessibility of web content, and in what way might regulation be possible?
• Considering developments in the fields of art and information architecture, how can we get to more sophisticated ways of interface design and the presentation of search results?
• What alternative ways of search are visible on the software level, the network level and the user level that challenge the engine as the major search paradigm?

Conference themes

• Critique of the Information Society
• Digital Civil Rights and Media Literacy
• Art and the Engine
• Politics and Regulation
• Interface Design and Data Presentation
• Alternative Search
• Project Showcase