Data Management as a signifying practice
David Gugerli, ETH Zurich
November 13, 2009, Amsterdam

Edited by: Baruch Gottlieb

Databases are operationally essential to the search society. Since the 1960’s, they have been developed, installed, and maintained by software engineers in view of a particular future user, and they have been applied and adapted by different user communities for the production of their own futures. Database systems, which, since their inception, offer powerful means for shaping and managing society, have since developed into the primary resource for search-centered signifying practice. The paper will present insights into the genesis of a society which depends on the possibility to search, find, (re-)arrange and (re-)interpret of vast amounts of data.

Download here the full lecture of David Gugerli given during the Society of the Query conference on Friday the 13th of November 2009.

The Fall 2009 lecture series at Harvard University recently featured a lecture by historian Robert Darnton, author of the essay Google & the Future of Books and director of the Harvard Library. In Google & the Future of Books, Darnton leaves no doubt as to the goal of research libraries to work toward opening up collections to readers everywhere. “Digitize we must”, he states, but stresses that it must be done in the interest of the public. He goes on to scrutinize the Google book settlement and discusses the implications of the deal that may result in the world’s largest library, as well as America’s greatest monopoly. Looking back, Darnton feels the research libraries have missed the opportunity to form a grand alliance in working toward a National Digital Library, and have left “a question of public policy – the control of access to information – to be determined by private lawsuit”.

On his Working Notes Blog, Ben Peters has written an excellent post about Darntons Harvard lecture. Peters, Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School and doctoral candidate at Columbia University studies the way the concept of information changes over time, technologies and societies, with an emphasis on Eastern Europe and America. In his lecture review, he highlights Darntons passion for the literary history of French Enlightenment and his long career in studying books, sketching the image of an “archetypal figure in a new class of open-source advocates: a mix of established man of letters and one who takes delight in slightly perverse and totally public revolution”.

Read Ben Peters’ post here:
http://www.columbia.edu/~bjp2108/blog

Google & the Future of Books on the New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281

Bron: http://www.techcrunch.com/

Google CEO Eric Schmidt On The Future Of Search: “Connect It Straight To Your Brain”
by Michael Arrington

This is Part 2 of my series of posts summarizing a fascinating recent hour-long one on one interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Early in the interview I asked Schmidt about the future of search. I brought up the “search is 90% done” misunderstanding from last summer. Said Google Vice President Marissa Mayer at the time:

Search is a science that will develop and advance over hundreds of years. Think of it like biology and physics in the 1500s or 1600s: it’s a new science where we make big and exciting breakthroughs all the time. However, it could be a hundred years or more before we have microscopes and an understanding of the proverbial molecules and atoms of search. Just like biology and physics several hundred years ago, the biggest advances are yet to come. That’s what makes the field of Internet search so exciting.

Specifically I asked Schmidt “What are the hard things to be solved in search in the next ten years?”

His lengthy answer meandered around a central theme, that Google needs to move “from words to meaning.” In other words, Google needs to understand queries better, and return results that best match the real meaning of a query. “We have to get from the sort of casual use of asking, querying…to “what did you mean?””

He then took a detour and shared a (non-serious) approach that cofounder Sergey Brin has talked about internally – direct brain implants:

Now, Sergey argues that the correct thing to do is to just connect it straight to your brain. In other words, you know, wire it into your head. And so we joke about this and said, we have not quite figured out what that problem looks like…But that would solve the problem. In other words, if we just – if you had the thought and we knew what you meant, we could run it and we could run it in parallel.

When I (again, jokingly) asked if Google was working on that product, he answered “Well, I wish we were. But we don’t exactly have all the medical clinics necessary to test brain insertion.”

But he also had a serious point. One big problem with search is a proper understanding of what exactly the user wants. And then how to pair that with exponential growth in datasets:

Okay. So to me, the question is sort of, what’s next, is really basically how far does the artificial intelligence technology go here? How many signals can we get from who you are, where you are, what you’ve been, what you’ve done and so forth to refine that querying? And at the same time, you also have this enormous expansion of data sets. I think what people are missing is that the amount of information on the Internet is growing very, very rapidly…Because it gets more open, people put more data on it and so forth and so on and that’s wonderful. Also, you have all these dynamic databases that are now – they basically publish that at web pages and again index them as well.

The long term goal of Google search, he says, is to give the user one exactly right answer to a query:

So I don’t know how to characterize the next 10 years except to say that we’ll get to the point – the long-term goal is to be able to give you one answer, which is exactly the right answer over time. Okay, you know, the question I’ll ask today, how many Americans have – what percentage of Americans have passports?…The Google’s answer was a site, which was somebody who had attempted to answer that question and had multiple answers. It’s quite interesting actually to read…So you go to a very good definitive site. And what I’d like to do is to get to the point where we could read his site and then summarize what it says, and answer the question…Along with the citation and so forth and so on.

The whole article and more information you can find on:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/03/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-on-the-future-of-search-connect-it-straight-to-your-brain/

Review of Susanne Gaschke , Klick – Strategien gegen die digitale Verdummung. Herder, Freiburg: 2009.

Susanne Gaschke‘s book Klick – Strategies Against Digital Stultification describes how the increasing prevalence of the internet and new media influences the culture of knowledge and education. She criticizes an infinite optimism of media, politics and science towards this phenomenon and decries an uncritical handling of the internet. Gaschke characterizes people following the paradigm of new media blindly as ideologists; she calls them ‘digitalists.’ Furthermore, a criticism of modern neoliberal capitalism accompanies her fundamental demand for more pessimism towards the new media.

Susanne Gaschke, a journalist writing for the German weekly DIE ZEIT, admits that she might be biased due to her profession in an old medium like a newspaper. To Gaschke, the ability to read is the most necessary competence in a modern society: „who reads, learns thinking“. But the digitalists have chosen a new ability to be crucial for a working society: media competence. Gaschke does not assert that media literacy is unimportant but she insists that being able to read still is the core competence, which enables other abilities. Thus she criticizes the unconsidered support of new media in all parts of life, especially in the educational system. Schools and kindergartens are supplied with computers, networks and software by the IT-industry. Politics accept it, knowing that corporations like Microsoft do not equip schools because of limitless altruism, but to tie customers to their brand, at a very young age.

Referring to Nicholas Carr‘s article Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Susanne Gaschke claims that internet use has changed the way we perceive and consume texts and media. Similar to Carr she points out that pace and restlessness have altered our patterns of cognition. The internet conditions the user to search for short texts he can browse briefly and superficially. For both Carr and Gaschke this results in a severe threat to the ability of concentrating. Susanne Gaschke holds the view that the digitalists are not open for any forms of critique of the new technology. She insists that fighting against new technological trends is always difficult, and quotes Adorno who already pointed out that criticizing new technologies is like fighting against the world spirit.

For Susanne Gaschke the group of digitalists is composed of the IT-industry, online service providers, media scientists, journalists and users. They all celebrate the beginning of a new era for mankind beginning with new media. Gaschke does not believe in all the hopes and promises linked with the digital world. She rejects aspirations concerning democratization and emancipation resulting in a politically functioning publicity, which emerged in beginning of the 90‘s. Gaschke points out that new media are not used to gain politically important information. Mainly it used for entertainment, to pass time and to consume products. That is where media pedagogy enters the discussion and claims to be the discipline teaching people how to use the internet. But for Gaschke this is not the main problem; she worries about the continuing distraction generated by the ubiquitous new media, which are available everywhere and anytime.

Gaschke warns the reader not to believe in the promises made by the digitalists. For Gaschke it is clear that the internet will not solve social problems, it will not close social gaps and it will not cause the emergence of a perfect society. She uses studies exemplifying that internet users do not read, but browse over websites briefly. Thus, she concludes, the perfect image of an overall informed, critical internet user does not exist often in reality. The problem of the youth is not the lack of access to information. The issue is that the ever-increasing digitalization has taken away their ability to understand and read things as a whole. Through the internet, people just do not have to read attentively anymore, because they have the belief they can find everything on the net. This notion of having information and knowledge anytime within a reachable distance is a threat to knowledge and education. Following this principle, adolescents are taught to get information easily and with few effort in the internet. Gaschke depicts this practice as a neglect of duty in education.  She raises the question what will happen if everyone relies on the principle of finding rather than knowing. For me this is a core question in the whole debate Gaschke starts: if everyone relies on search engines results, who is the person making sense of all the information that is found?

Further more, Gaschke points out the digitalists‘ belief that all information on the internet can be treated equally. For Gaschke this ends up in egalitarianism. Her view is that society depends on hierarchical structures of knowledge, which are rejected consistently by the digitalists. She admits that the internet offers opportunities to inform oneself beyond the things learned in school or from journalism. But at least, and I think Gaschke is right, the society needs a certain consensus about the things that are important to know. Another important aspect Gaschke states is that society always has to rely on experts. The digitalists believe that knowledge structures and hierarchies disappear because of the access to information through the internet. But as Gaschke exemplifies it: If I want orthopaedic advice, I want to get it from an orthopaedist and not from somebody who knows what an orthopaedist does, and posted it on Wikipedia.

Another interesting topic mentioned by Susanne Gaschke concerns the distinction between adulthood and childhood, which is fading away due to the use of new media. Referring to Neil Postman, Gaschke holds the view that adults are keepers of secrets which are slowly revealed to children during the process of growing up. But the extensive use of the internet by children changes this situation, because they are confronted with the secrets not mediated by their parents: „The digital culture cannot deal with symbolic secrets which are meaningful for the process of growing up“. Here she traceably argues that this confrontation can obviously happen too early, and confuse children more than it enlightens them.  A further aspect mentioned by Susanne Gaschke is that new media simultaneously change adults and convert them to children again. The internet looses the adult‘s self restrictions, characterizing adulthood, and enhances accommodating the inner drives, which eventually results in clicking. She wants to prove this process of adults mutating to children by using figures that demonstrate that the age of people playing computer has risen. Thus they become more like children, because playing video games is for children. But I think the higher level of age is mainly a consequence of the former video-gaming kids becoming older and keeping on playing, not a result of older people suddenly starting to play computer games.

Additionally, Susanne Gaschke questions the usefulness and the concept of Web 2.0. She admits that the web offers the opportunity of connecting scientists and enabling exchange of knowledge, but she is critical of terms like ‘wisdom of the crowds’ or ‘peer production,’ because the basis of these principles should be expertise, which is not always prevalent in the Web 2.0. She consults the Condorcet Theorem (referring to the French philosopher Marquis de Condorcet), which says that groups are able to take better and exacter decisions, but only under the conditions that at least one half of the group has the necessary knowledge. Otherwise the group’s decision will be terribly wrong. In addition, she criticizes the quality and the necessity of contributions in the Web 2.0. She questions if it is a benefit that everyone can publish his views on something, even if they are untrue or inciting. But I am of the opinion that this is not an online problem in most instances. Web 2.0 just mediates information and is not the origin of certain problematic views or contributions. It is just a new way of distribution; shielding Web 2.0 from becoming a successful channel for extremists is mainly a task of society, which should generally prevent people from following dangerous ideas. She also decries the enhancing influence of the internet on phenomenona like happy slapping (slap other people and film it with the cell phone) or rampages, because the internet provides the protagonists with an audience. But I believe that blaming new media for events like that is not adequate, they just make these things more visible but do not cause them. Another terrible example she mentions concerns the case of Abraham Biggs who began suicide and broadcasted his death over the internet in January 2008 and none of the viewers called emergency, they watched him die. Gaschke admits that the internet was not the reason of the suicide, but it gave him the chance to broadcast it live. But again, an absence of the internet would not have avoided his death; it just would not have been that visible.

Moreover she argues that the blog culture does not result in a open discourse which eventually produces the completely enlightened unified community. Miriam Meckel (communication scientist, St. Gallen) believes that in Weblogs the users develop the synthesis as a result of discussing thesis and anti-thesis. But Gaschke rejects that by citing an American study showing that 90 percent of references made by blogs, are links to other blogs that have nearly the same opinion, so they are more likely to be echo rooms than areas of balanced discussions.

Furthermore, she critizes social networks for being platforms of self-profiling. People use it to show who they are and to find acceptance and recognition. But Gaschke is of the opinion that this produces a false image, especially for adolescents who believe that friends can be found easily on the web without real-life investments. For her, the demand for online relations and friendships is just a consequence of a lack of social contacts in reality, but those cannot be replaced that easily, because the virtual relations will never be as intense as the real ones.

As a print journalist, Gaschke is consistently arguing against the substitution of newspapers through online news. The main reason to keep them is that newspapers are initially consumed as a whole; they confront the reader with information and opinions he does not (want to) know. The customization of news on the internet destroys this process. Another fundamental problem Gaschke identifies is the lack of quality in online news. Online news is cheaper to produce but generates the same amount of advertising revenue and thus the quality suffers. For Gaschke another reason for the inferiority of online news is that they often rely on user-generated content and exploit bloggers, who work for free and often do not have the expertise of a journalist. She might be right with this point, but I would avoid the term of exploitation, because nobody forces users to give away their produced material.

A fundamental aspect of Gaschke‘s book is that she consequently links her criticism of new media with criticism of today’s form of capitalism. To her, the new culture caused by the internet is just the logical outcome of neoliberal capitalism that has reigned over the past decades. Throughout the years neo-liberalism has altered society. Flexibility became the crucial credo for people who wanted to function properly in the modern ‘knowledge society,’ which is a neoliberal propaganda term in Gaschke‘s eyes. Her interesting opinion is that new media force us to be even more flexible, so flexible that we might lose the last carryover of necessary stability. The mentioned mutation from adults to children again is just a wish of capitalism, because they are the better consumers, they do not contain themselves. The neoliberal paradigm has desocialized and fragmented society by forcing people to become flexible and restless, always ready to focus on something ‘new.’ These attributes are now converted to internet culture and enhanced by new media simultaneously.

Gaschke even sees the desire for relationships in social networks as a consequence of the neoliberal system. People search online because neo-liberalism produced an unstable society, which lacks real, intense relations. And she gives a very absorbing explanation for digitalists being ideological: before the collapse of the Soviet Union capitalism did not need to be ideological, because the alternative system was not successful. But after the fall of the Soviet Union the alternative disappeared and flexible capitalism created an ideology strongly conjoined with technology: new media will provide everyone with knowledge, information and prosperity. „This ideology leaves a few winners, a considerable group of losers and a big stack of pancake-persnoalities, which do not flourish in the chaos but stretch out to all directions“, Gaschke says. But one can just turn this argument upside down and assert that because of the system alternative communism, capitalism was ideological and does not have to be it anymore. To Gaschke, the digitization is just an additional instrument of rationalization; she finds proof of this in the computer-based economic increase, which resulted in an decrease of 130,000 jobs in the media sector in the United States.

Susanne Gaschke‘s work is an interesting and alarming book, urging the reader to question the whole hype in regards of new media. She makes plenty of interesting points that are often not taken into consideration when the influence of new media is discussed. I share her opinion that we should not glorify the internet as the new instrument to create a reasonable and informed society, without necessary investments in real education.  But since she is a journalist, her critique often is polemical and her arguments could be discussed in a more balanced way.

German Wikipedia page about Susanne Gaschke:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susanne_Gaschke

A link to Nichloas Carr‘s article „Is Google Making Us Stupid?“:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

English Wikipedia page about the philosopher Marquis de Condorcet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Condorcet

Homepage about Gaschke‘s book from the publisher Herder:
http://www.herder.de/buecher/gesellschaft_politik/detailseiten/29996_Klick/details?k_tnr=29996&par_onl_struktur=1573791&onl_struktur=0&sort=3&query_start=&tb=0&titel=Klick

Review of Stefan Weber, Das Google-Copy-Paste-Syndrome: Wie Netzplagiate Ausbildung und Wissen gefährden. Heise Verlag, Hannover: 2009.

The Google-Copy-Paste-Syndrome: How Web-Plagiarism endangers Education and Knowledge, written by Stefan Weber, deals with the influence of the ever-increasing internet use on the prevalent culture of knowledge. Austrian media scholar Weber states that the soaring spread of the new media results in a „text culture without brains.“ Stefan Weber decided to become a plagiarism-scientist after he discovered that a theologian from Tübingen has written off 90 pages of his own dissertation. Since that he has collected 14 folders with over 60 cases of plagiarism which build the base of his work. Internet enhances plagiarism in schools, journalism, the arts and especially at universities. Weber criticizes current media and cultural studies programs which ignore the augmented emergence of plagiarism due to an exaggerated optimism towards new media, thereby enhancing the problem by spreading their infinitely technophile theories.

The author, who lives and works in Dresden and Salzburg, states that today‘s students follow a process of three steps to create academic texts. Initially, they Google their topic. Then they copy and paste significant parts of text found on the Web. Knowing the importance of the outside appearance they finally layout their produced mosaic. Weber cites American studies proving that 36% of the students have admitted to have copied sentences in the web and have pasted it into their academic work. For Weber this development is the consequence of the omnipresent use of the internet, because it facilitates the appropriation of texts. The author argues that by allowing this “culture without brains” to spread, the elaborate academic system of reference puts itself in danger. Weber‘s position is that a „recycling“ text culture, which permits people to plagiarize, will end up in scientific stagnation.

The number of plagiarism cases has increased over the past years and Weber relates this to the increased employment of the internet. A current example of plagiarism is Chris Anderson’s Free. Waldo Jaquith revealed in a blog that he discovered passages in the book that were nearly copied verbatimly, mostly from Wikipedia but also from other publications, without references. Chris Anderson already has apologized and wants to publish the references digitally. Besides Weber uses studies in the United States and the UK, which show that ca. 30% of all students are plagiarizing. But these numbers also reveal that the source of plagiarism is more often a printed book than an online text. This weakens Weber‘s argument that a new culture of plagiarism has risen online because it shows that the writers of these studies mostly wrote off paper books and that plagiarism is not an online problem in most instances. Though that does not debilitate his thesis, saying that the culture of appropriating texts (no matter of what kind of source) without comprehending them derives from extensive internet use. Because it is still possible that using the internet lowers the threshold to begin plagiarizing.

Weber admits that there are no empirical data that prove a positive influence of the Web 2.0 on the number of plagiarism cases. In spite of that he claims that there is a positive influence on the culture of producing texts without reference. This „sampling culture“ is enhanced by the free licensing ideas existing in the internet. Weber traceably argues that the idea of free licensing derives from the development of software and should not be transferred unconcerned to a knowledge culture that is based on texts.

Weber asserts that content is not the most important thing on the Web 2.0 because it provides the user with the technical preconditions to put up websites easily (with software like media wiki). After creating a new site it needs to be filled with content that is usually copy-pasted from elsewhere. I hold the view that this argument is not very convincing. Concluding that the existence of a technology that facilitates the production of content results in plagiarism seems to be too critical. Logically, it should be the other way around. Because technical investments are marginal, there are more resources available to create content. Today, nobody would assert that Gutenberg‘s invention of the printing press caused intellectual decline. Additionally, Weber tries to prove the proximity between Web 2.0 and plagiarism by stating that plenty of web portals and social networks are copies of American originals. But claiming that users of such a copy are more likely to plagiarize appears to be a bit farfetched, too.

Weber also mentions further reasons for the increase of plagiarism that go beyond blaming only the internet and new media. For example, he mentions that some universities do not teach introductions into academic working methods or teach them wrongly. Another interesting reason noted by Weber is that studying at universities has become a sort of CV management. Studying itself has become less important while the managing of achieving certain titles by simulating competence is becoming the main task for students. But he also claims that some students are lazy or too dumb and therefore plagiarize and he tries to prove these assertions by showing a few examples from internet forums citing students who are searching a way to reduce their work. But lazy students have always existed and giving single forum-extracts is neither a way to show that this really leads to plagiarism nor does it show that students of today are lazier because of the internet.

Furthermore, Weber gives a good indication to what is often forgotten when we talk about Google and its official aim to „organize the information of the world.” Weber mentions that Google just organizes the digital world’s information. So, if we only rely on knowledge transferred by Google, we will probably miss out on a lot. Weber also doubts the benefits of Google‘s book scanning project Google Books. The availability of a lot of texts online makes it possible to penetrate them by scanning and superficial browsing and as a consequence this could reduce reading competence significantly because it is just not necessary anymore to read and understand texts as a whole. Thus the scanning project of Google could be a real threat for the book as a medium. But he also criticizes Google Books because it enables plagiarism by supplying texts, although they could not be marked and copy-pasted, the texts could at least be written off. But that is not a problem of Google Books or the internet, writing off has always been possible—also from paper books.

Weber points out that the culture of plagiarism also spills over to journalism and arts. He complaints about journalists who use information they gather from Google to simulate their competence in regards of the issues they are dealing with. In this way they do no longer have to do classical investigation. But for me the question is if this changes the facts that are provided to the audience. If the information found on Google is the same as the information the journalist received by local research it does not change what kind of knowledge reaches the audience eventually. But Weber points out an interesting effect as a consequence of the use of Google by journalists. They lose their function as Gatekeepers which is now executed by the Google-algorithm.

According to Stefan Weber, the intensified usage of Google and Wikipedia builds the base for a generation of students that will be incapable to read and comprehend texts. This principle of not capturing full content and just using texts partially and superficially causes problems for the academic system. In Weber‘s view a new culture of simulating competence emerged that has started to replace the prevalent culture of academic practices and knowledge. This „culture of hypocrisy,“ as Weber calls it, flourishes in a milieu of technology- and media optimism that can be found in media studies circles. That is another important and striking aspect of Weber‘s book. He consistently criticizes media- and cultural studies because he is of the opinion that they follow a paradigm that does not leave any space for a critical opinion on the increasing digitalization. He refers the uncritical position existing in the media studies to certain myths dominating them. One myth, for example, is the hidden technical determinism, which means that technology is always emphasized as something mankind has to follow. Weber does not like this idea of technology as an almost auto-poietic system that operates completely independent of human beings. His opinion is that we should not forget that humans produce and control the technology. Another example is the myth, most central to Weber, which says that current media studies consistently disagree with all positions that take negative consequences of New Media usage into consideration.

Weber criticizes cultural studies and the media itself for supporting this development with something Weber calls „bullshit PR.“ He uses a definition of bullshit from Harry G. Frankfurt who called it a discursive strategy to maintain everything you want to. In Weber’s opinion cultural studies and constructivism provide an academic background for the new text culture of plagiarism and stupidity. In Weber‘s view constructivism builds a fertile ground for plagiarism by questioning the idea of an author. Constructivists legitimize plagiarism by declaring the idea of authorship to a social construct. The cultural studies supply the „culture of hypocrisy“ because they do something, which Weber calls „Mickey Mouse science”. That means that during the last years a lot of cultural scientists did qualitative researches that in Weber‘s eyes did not gain any knowledge and were open for any kind of result or „bullshit.“ By using „soft“ methods and choosing research themes of which the outcome is already clear the cultural studies in their today‘s shape support the emerging change of our knowledge culture.

Moreover Stefan Weber claims that the extensive use of the internet is a menace to our existing language culture. He is of the opinion that trends like „weblish“ and „cyber talk“ can become a real danger for the written language, especially in science. He accuses media and cultural studies again for being to optimistic towards enhancing mediatisation and for ignoring studies that show negative outcomes of it. Weber also emphasizes on the education of adolescents who are confronted with an growing amount of media. His opinion is that this has more negative implications than positive ones. Furthermore, he mentions the lack of critical emancipation of the new media users. During the 90s there was the hope of democratization and informational independence that would result in a critical publicity, but these ideas have vanished and Weber concludes that we mostly use new media for its own sake.

Stefan Weber‘s book is an interesting work, which encourages the reader to think about the increasing spread of new media in all parts of our lives. He warns us to keep in mind that digitalization and mediatisation can also have negative outcomes, which should be examined by media scientists. Weber tries to fight for appropriate methods in the academic world, which are threatened by the increased ‘Googlization.’ Unfortunately, Weber weakens his own argument because in my opinion he does not follow the strict academic demand he postulates throughout his own book. The whole work is written very emotionally and the reader sometimes gets the impression that it is Weber‘s personal campaign against plagiarism. His criticism on cultural studies and constructivism appears polemical and it does not seem to follow scientific rules too strictly, although his points may be advisable. According to this, he often uses single examples he has found somewhere in the internet. He for example demonstrates the laziness of students with one extract of a forum. A further example of this practice is his proof of the decline of language, Weber shows extracts from the internet showing gross samples of „Weblish“ and then concludes that this is a severe threat to the written culture. At another point he criticizes mobile phones because they provide a good opportunity to cheat during exams. This seems to be a bit pedantic, cheating has always happened and before mobile phones existed students used cheat sheets. So this is not a good example of how new media can be a threat to our knowledge and academic system.

In spite of this criticism, The Google-Copy-Paste Syndrome is an alarming book that reminds us to stay critical towards new media. Because, as Stefan Weber states correctly, by being too optimistic and uncritical, the scientific world looses its power of interpretation and leaves the cultural development regarding media to the technology and entertainment industry. The book is a like a thorn in the side of media studies telling us not let go our capability of criticism concerning internet, digitalization and new media.

An interview with Stefan Weber in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
http://www.faz.net/s/RubCF3AEB154CE64960822FA5429A182360/Doc~E8E6AE7133D524A489ECAE90CB0B2558A~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

List of Stefan Weber‘s publications:
http://www.kfj.at/publikationsliste-stefanweber.htm

An interesting article concerning this issue by Nicholas Char:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

German Wikipedia site about Stefan Weber:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Weber_(Medienwissenschaftler)

Heise website about „The Google Copy Paste Syndrom“:
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/buch/buch_25.html

Review of Gugerli, D. (2009). Suchmaschinen. Die Welt als Datenbank. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

In his book Search Engines, The World as a Database (Suchmaschinen, Die Welt als Datenbank) the Swiss historian of technology David Gugerli describes the forerunners of Internet search engines in the second half of the 20^th century exemplified by four different case studies. He starts with the examination of two German television shows, which Gugerli considers as early forms of search engines that were providing certain functions demanded for by the society. Furthermore, the author analyses the methods invented by the German BKA (The German Federal Criminal Police Office) in the early 1970‘s. Gugerli then explains the development of search engines using the idea of the relational data bank invented by Edgar F. Codd in 1969.

In the introduction Gugerli depicts the ubiquity of the search engine Google and all its additional services. Then he reminds the reader that before Google there have been different sorts of search engines that worked outside of the Internet. The detection of earthquake-zones or low-pressure systems for example was executed by satellites, sensors and simulations. Superstars and scandals were detected by TV-stations. Managers searched for information in corporate data bases, which were not open to everyone. Gugerli mentions that every type of search engine is situated in an area of conflict, between overview and surveillance. The author explains that search engines are connected with hopes concerning democratization, informational emancipation and complete overview. Contradictory they are also linked with fears regarding the vision of an Orwellian state of permanent observation. Gugerli identifies four functions that all search engines have in common. First of all, search engines premise that the aims of their operation can be objectified. Secondly, search engines operate in a concrete room of addresses. Search engines can only work, if they can link the searched object with an address. Thirdly, search engines follow a certain pattern, from which they cannot divert, but they simultaneously show a fundamental openness for results. Fourthly, search engines feature a special proximity to games and simulations.

The first case-study taken into consideration by David Gugerli is the old German TV-show: „Was bin ich?“ (What am I?), that had been aired between 1961- the year Gugerli was born –   and 1989 and hosted by Robert Lembke. The game-idea of the show was to let the audience guess which profession attendant persons in the show had. These persons had to display four characteristics of themselves at the beginning of the show: a signature, stating whether they are employed or self-employed, gesturing a situation typical of their job and selecting the color of a piggybank. During this procession the profession of the person was revealed to the TV-audience. A team composed of four (more or less) famous persons, who used these four different inputs to find out the person‘s job. They asked questions that could only be answered with „Yes“ or „No“, and for every „No“ the candidate received five DM (Deutsche Mark), which were put into a piggybank, whose color has been selected before. „Was bin ich?“ had been a very successful TV-show for almost 30 years. David Gugerli identifies an interesting reason for this success. He argues that in Germany people demanded for reliability of expectations, the audience had a desire for the certainty that professions and people could be linked. The structure of the show offered a method which was able to conjoin professions with persons exemplarily. Gugerli labels this possibility of linking jobs and persons as normal and therefore concludes that „Was bin ich?“ was a search engine seeking the „normal“ in German society. In a next traceable step Gugerli classifies this desire for reliability into the historic context in Germany. After World War II people searched for a new identity because the old structures of identification had vanished. Gugerli concludes that „Was bin ich?“ supported this process of self-discovery. It showed that the profession was a stable attribute of a person that could be discovered by using the simple mechanism of the show. Later on the society changed but the show stayed the same for almost 30 years and absorbed the complexity which had emerged because of social alteration beginning in the 60‘s. The mechanism of the show reduced the question for individual identity to what someone was, not who and in this way objectified the question.

The second case-study the professor at the Technical University Zurich (ETH Zürich) uses for illustration is the German TV-show „Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst“. The show went on the air in October 1967 and was hosted by Eduard Zimmermann. In the show Zimmermann presented unsolved criminal cases which were re-enacted by performers. After a shown clip, the host talked to an expert of the police to give additional information to the audience. People sitting in front of the TVs were then requested to provide the police with relevant information. In this manner the show tried to find a delinquent based on the criminal practice and the traces of the crime. The consequence of this procedure was the reliability of expectations concerning the deviant, the aim of the search was connecting criminal work and the associated delinquent and to link his position with an address. In contrast to „Was bin ich?“ this show did not provide the audience with an image of the normal but with an image of the deviant. „Was bin Ich?“ was a search engine looking for the normal in society, while „Aktenzeichen XY“ was searching for the opposite, the deviant. And this is where Gugerli detects the entertaining potential of the show, by searching the deviant the show stabilized the amusing distinction between normal and abnomral. In the show the searched criminal did not fall under the presumption of innocence anymore, the show put everyone under general suspicion. The audience built a giant living network that provided information like a data bank with the advantage that it did not need to be fed with information by the police and Zimmermann before. The show objectified by considering cases and files, then it subjectified the cases again by re-enacting them with actors. After this simulation of the audience being witness of the crime, it was objectified again by the police expert who provided additional and real details regarding the case. 

As the third case-study exemplifying the function of a search engine David Gugerli selected the methods of the BKA (Federal Criminal Police office) that were invented when the new BKA-president Horst Herold started his work in 1971. Herold built up a giant computer data base system containing all information that had been collected by the german police. Using this background Herold created a search engine that should find statistically attestable patterns of the deviant. These results were supposed to serve as arguments for the prevention of crime and were the background for flexible manpower planning. Repression should be substituted by prevention, contention by dynamics, command by control, experience by logics and hypothesis by prognosis. Allocation of police resources followed the results of the analysis and the patterns that had been found out and were adapted flexibly. But in contrast to Zimmermann and Lembke, Herold himself had to create the bases for his search engine: He transformed information on papers into electronic data, facts were linked with addresses and were retrievable constantly. This data could be combined and compared and in this way opened new forms of criminological research, e.g. it was possible to search for „all 19 year old bakers with a Swabian dialect“.

Furthermore Herold‘s search engine became omnipresent and connected all police stations and reduced the distance between the central and the periphery, the system intelligence moved from the centre to the periphere elements. In the end the data base of the BKA was connected with international networks so that there was access to the German data from the whole world. To enable operating of the search engine the BKA implement different steps of objectifying the data. A fingerprint for example was at first captured as a photo, then it was enlarged and its characteristics were fixed as mathematical expressions and saved as a file in the data base. The idea of searching for patterns of social deviant behaviour, to take preventive actions which should substitute the search for the delinquent, was based on substantial objectifying of traces and characteristics of delinquents. Thus an attribute drifting from the norm could result in a decisive information for the police. This system depended on a giant amount on information and therefore started to stagnate because channels of information were overloaded. After describing explicitly how Herlod‘s „cybernetic police“ worked, Gugerli explains that the idea of a „cybernetic controlled, failure-free society“ failed because of the masses of information the system had to deal with. The terror of the RAF during the 1970‘s legitimized and stabilized the work of Herold‘s Engine until the resources of the system were exhausted. 

The last example that is pointed out by David Gugerli concerns the relational data bank as it has been imagined by Edgar F. Codd in 1969 and has more to do with the type of search engine we are used to. His aim was to create a data base which allowed to combine all files with each other and to investigate all kinds of possible connections between them. Codd‘s main idea was that users of future data bases do not have to possess special knowledge to use the data base. In fact it was his view that people have to be protected from depending on knowledge in regards to the internal organisation and functionality of the data in which they are interested. Until Codd‘s time hierarchical data banks had predefined ways of gaining access to the information which they had stored. Hence new kinds of questions were only possible if the user was informed about the saving-structures of the data base he or she wanted to consult. By changing this, Codd expected the users to become more specialized in asking, while the people programming the data base were assuring a reliably operating system. This gave people the opportunity to use the data bank as a black box which they could ask whatever they wanted to. Consequently, the use of the search engine changed from seeking for certain items to an open query for results. Together with his employer IBM, Codd developed the project „System R“ which was the attempt to form a data base usable even for people with less knowledge about computers. To facilitate this, they invented the „Structured English Query Language“ (SEQUEL) which enabled an easier way of querying. In mind they had the idea of a manager who needs information to take a decision independent of his knowledge about programming and data banks. This new type of search turned the computer to an important economic search engine that could be used as an instrument for rationalization. The relational data bases helped the companies to reduce transaction costs and to expand the possibilities of combining resources because it lowered the investment necessary for analysis. In Germany these ideas resulted in an alteration of the culture regarding the usage of data bases, now it was possible to query in real time and users and data were separated through a default software. 

In the end of his book Gugerli points out that western societies of the 20^th century are characterized by flexibilization of expectations and the situational recombination of resources. For him, these attributes have been supported by search engines. They made it possible to locate addressable objects and increased the possibilities to access these objects. In this part Gugerli comes to the main issues of this book and he states that search engines produce overviews, determine priorities and create differences between the things they include and things they exclude. Furthermore, Gugerli gives a logic reason why search engines have a political history. It is because they contain the user‘s attention by having a certain structure of data rooms, programs and presentation of results. 

David Gugerli‘s book opens up a new view on the work of old search engines. We usually think of internet search engines like Google but he reminds us that the process of searching has been an important task in the society before the emergence of the internet. By picking the examples he demonstrates the development of search engines and successfully creates a historical room for reflections what has been his intention. The detailed descriptions of the characteristics of each search engine provided by Gugerli facilitate the understanding of how the examples functioned as search engines in their temporal and social context. The examples and explanations given by Gugerli help to consider the nowadays omnipresent Internet search engine differentiated and help to understand how search engines have become an essential base of our modern society.

Links:

This article as a PDF: Review on D. Gugerli

Biography: Inormation about D. Gugerli

More information: Resources

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