The digital future of finding out

May 28, Vienna 2010

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The automatic classification of data, its indexing, and its evaluation are at the heart  of new communication environments. What lies beneath is not just a drive to organize the world’s information, but also to classify human relations: from the management of the modern workplace and consumers in mass societies, to the bio-political management of the network society. Sociometric algorithms quantify all areas of life in order to mathematically model and predict human behavior. In today’s booming world of data mining, algorithmic methods based on large digital datasets are routinely used for determining political influence and analyzing social dispositions or contagious trends. Digital transactions provide huge amounts of private and semi-private data on personal preferences that are harvested to customize and transform everyday experiences.

A key nexus is provided by search engines, multi-purpose tools present in many dimensions of life, and the increasingly comprehensive environments of services offered by search engine providers. Understanding search-based societies does not only require an analysis of the deep history of the storing and indexing of information, but also the study of complex new forms of retrieval and data analysis. This includes the new position of search engines in a top-down control matrix as well as “bottom-up” recommendation systems, “push-search”, folksonomies and the presumed wisdom of crowds. Search can only be understood if the still evolving redistribution of power in digital networks is addressed in both its centralizing and de-centralizing dimensions.

http://world-information.org/deepsearch2

In cooperation with IRFS 2010

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DEEP SEARCH II, Vienna 2010

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The conference Deep Search II focuses on key issues in this fast and dynamic field.  First, we want to highlight the historical dimensions of our attempts to organize information and people. Second, we want to investigate the politics of search, conflict and dimensions of power, and, finally, future classification schemes beyond search, tracking and social recommendation systems, including new forms of pattern recognition in large data sets.

11:00: Visions of Organizing the World
14:00: Sociometry, Networks and Classification
15:45: Rent and Bias
17:45: Contextual Modelling

With: Chad Wellmon, Yuk Hui, Sebastian Giessmann, Greg Elmer, Elizabeth von Couvering, Matteo Pasquinelli, mc Schraefel, Karl H.  Müller

Conference Editors: Konrad Becker und Felix Stalder, World-Information Institute

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Friday 28.5.2010 10:30 – 20:00

Hotel Imperial Riding School Vienna

Ungargasse 60, 1030 Wien

Admission is free!

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Find detailed information about the event at:

http://world-information.org/deepsearch2

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Second Edition out:

Deep Search – The Politics of Search beyond Google

Konrad Becker/ Felix Stalder [eds.] Studienverlag & Transaction   Publishers, 2009.  220 pages.

English: ISBN 978-3-7065-4795-6  German: ISBN 978-3-7065-4794-9

+ Upcoming:

Critical Strategies in Art and Media: Perspectives of New Cultural Practices

Konrad Becker, Jim Fleming (eds.) Autonomedia 2010

ISBN 978-1-57027-214-1

http://world-information.org/wii/critical_strategies

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World-Information Institute
Tel./Mobile: +43 (1) 522 18 34
Operngasse 20b, A-1040 Vienna
E-Mail: office[@]t0.or.at

Web: http://t0.or.at
Web: http://world-information.org
Web: http://world-information.org/wii

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Martin Feuz is an independent researcher with a strong interest in human-information interactions. Specifically, he focuses on exploratory (Web) search and the ways in which such interactions can be meaningfully and experimentally supported. In his recent work, he undertook a critical analysis of Google personal search to open the lid of Google’s black box a little bit and to make some of its behavior more door reflection.
In Society of the Query, Feuz presents the research that lead to the development of his new website Perspectoma.com. Perspectoma is a research engine that allows us to get a glimpse into how Google Personal Search delivers ‘personalised’ search results on the basis of an users Search and Web History.
Perspectoma works by simulating Search and Web Histories. The website offers five profiles for which Search and Web Histories are developed. These profiles contain approximately the equal amount of search queries that an average user accumulates over two years of searching with Google.
When performing a search, Perspectoma’s search result page shows:

•    the search results only available for the profile
•    the search results of an anonymous user without personalization
•    the search results that are available to both, the selected profile and the anonymous user and but have a different search result ranking (blue)
•    the search results that are available to both, the selected profile and the anonymous user and share the same search result ranking (green)

Google describes personal search as ‘based on your search & web history. Your personal results will be re-ranked or swapped for more relevant ones.” However, it gives no indications whatsoever when a particular search result is personalized. Therefore you actually never really know where your returns come from, and which ones are specially there to target you as a consumer, or to help you. Google states that if you don’t want personal search, you can just sign out of your Google account, Unfortunately, this is not a very practical because in the end you seem to sign into Google very often and easily forget to sign out.

Feuz starts his presentation by posing four main questions he wanted to deal with while creating Perspectoma.

•    how soon (after how many queries) will Google Personal search play a roll in the Google search returns?
•    how do these personal returns develop in terms of frequency and intensity?
•    what underlying patterns can we identify?
•    how will grouping of profiles influence the search terms?

To find answers to these questions, Feuz describes the research he did according to the 3 ghost accounts based on the characters Kant, Foucault and Nietzsche. He trained all of the accounts equally in training sessions with the help of software that did different search queries. To do this, he had to find a way to make an artificial profile relational for subjective inspection of personalized search results. To tackle this problem, he used specific books for the different theorists. He also had to find a way to get plenty search terms to create profiles.
After training session 1 Feuz found that the search returns for Foucaults profile were personalized results quite early, but not very frequently. The search returns for Kant were a bit of personalized but not to much/to often. Feuz also considers that this could have to do with the type language Kant uses in his books. For Nietszche a lot of personalized results turned up, but this actually was the result of a small glitch in the technology.
Martin Feuz concludes that he is surprised how soon the personal search returns seem start turning up. Google personalized search is not shy. After the second training sessions the amount of personal returns seem to grow, while after 3000 search queries more than every second result is personalized. Also, it seems that there is a kind of group profiling happening.
Finally, Feuz states that personalized search does not seem to be able to lift the less dominant voices from deep down the unbiased search returns. Actually, it seems that most often personalization means that only some of the returns from the second page have been swapped into the first ten personal search returns.

Flarf poetry can be characterized as an avant-garde poetry movement of the late 20th and the early 21st century. In flarf poetry a poet roams the Internet using random word searches, to distill newly created phrases and bizarre constructions that he later shares with the flarf community.

Flarf poetry can be described as a ‘readymade’, collage technique that has connections to the Surrealists in the 20s and William Burroughs cut-up technique from 1959. Flarf itself exists for a decade and has since then evolved by using web poetry generators and chatbots like Jabberwacky.

Ton van het Hof showed an example of flarf by Sharen Mesmer: “A knowing diabetic bitch”

This is my Readymade Flarf poem using Jabberwacky:

What is Flarf? The greatest two dimensional thing in the world. What is Flarf? A Flatland. It’s a satire on this one.

Although my self made poem doesn’t show this so well (I am unfortunately an amateur flarf poet), flarf poems are often as disturbing as they are hilarious, which have made many people question if flarf will can ever be taken serious. Even though this question is still a valid question today, the movement is showing signs to have cleared a spot amongst the ranks of the legitimate art forms, finding its ways to blogs, magazines and conferences.

Finally the moment has come, the Society of the Query conference will start this morning at 09:30! For all of you using twitter, flickr or other social media, please use the following tag (or #hashtag):

sotq

…Let our questioning this weekend flow thought the veins of the Web!

Ever wondered how Google Personal Search affects search results? At perspectoma.com you can now examine it through the lens of search profiles such as Foucault, Nietzsche, Kant, Wiener or Latour. Extensive Search and Web Histories have been created for these illustrative persons based on indexed terms of their books. By having such artifically created profiles available you can generate and interrogate personalised search results from a different perspective and in disguise.

Perspectoma is one part of the recent research project conducted by Martin Feuz who will be speaking at the Society of the Query conference on Saturday as part of the Googlization session. In his talk he will discuss the novel methods developed to examine Google Personal Search and present fresh findings.

The Islamic search engine I’m Halal, created by Reza Sardeha, a 20-year-old Iranian that studies business in Amsterdam, has entered the Dutch news this weekend as critical questions were asked in parliament about the use of the search engine in Dutch schools. The issue has been inspired by a recent article in the Dutch gay magazine GayKrant, which emphasizes the fact that the engine qualifies search terms such as gay and gay marriage as possibly ‘haram’ (unclean or forbidden). Haram is the opposite of ‘halal’, an Arabic adjective meaning ’something that is permissible in Islam’ and the term by which the search engine derived its name. Since its conception in September 2009, the search engine has been discussed on international blogs and news media, the focal point of most of the debate being a supposed Islamization of the Web.

I’m Halal has entered the search engine market two months ago with the stated goal to provide the increasingly online Muslim community with a responsible and safe environment to continue their online activities. Using the search engine will prevent Muslim users from accidentally encountering less wholesome and explicit Internet content that may be cause for religious concerns. In an interview on thenextweb.com, CEO Sardeha notes that the need to start I’m Halal was also born from the fact that even the highest Google Safe Search settings still did not provide “clean and safe enough” results. As opposed to Google, I’m Halal focuses first and foremost on its result filtering system, which is programmed to perform according to Muslim religious law. Searching the engine for non-halal keywords results in a warning message that will indicate the ‘haram’ level of your inquiry on a three-level scale. On this procedure, the ImHalal.com Blog states:

When you get a Haram warning of 1 out of 3 this means that the results fetched by ImHalal.com could potentially contain explicit content but if you think the results will be clean you still can continue your search. When you get a Haram warning of 2 out of 3 this means that the results fetched by ImHalal.com probably will contain explicit content but if your really sure your search will return clean results you can continue your search. Last but most certainly not least when you get a Haram warning of 3 out of 3 this means that the search results will most certainly contain sexual explicit content and so you can’t continue your search and you are advised to try another search inquiry.

A query for gay reaches a haram level of 2 out of 3, indicating that the search results may well be haram. However, clicking on the accompanying link will still provide you with the results of the query – the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans gender community Gay.com being the first hit. Sardeha notes that “besides explicit sexual content we don’t censor anything since we only filter content. After being warned by our system you are in charge to determine if you will continue your search or not. [...] ImHalal.com is not a dictatorial search engine which believes in censorship, we want people to be able to continue their online search. And no political or religious censorship has been implemented or will be implemented in the future.”

I’m Halal is not the first search engine with a religious theme, as Cyrus Farivar points out in an article on Theworld.org. Besides a number of Christian and Jewish engines, there exists the “Islamic Google” filter and NaqaTube, an Islamically pure version of YouTube. While there is an obvious demand for these services and I’m Halal has attracted a large amount of visitors since its start-up, Farivar quotes several scholars that are skeptical about the Muslim community embracing the idea of a restrictive search engine. Helmi Noman for instance, a Yemeni researcher with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, argues that the Internet in North Africa and the Middle East is already extremely restrictive. Authorities and governments impose forms of censorship upon users that go way beyond measures taken by I’m Halal and he deems it unlikely that they would think of adding another layer of filtering to the Web by using services like these.

In answer to the questions asked in parliament this weekend, Dutch Minister Ronald Plasterk states that the use of I’m Halal within the school system will not be prohibited. While the qualification of search terms such as gay as haram may be offensive and the filtering of search terms according to an orthodox Islamic perspective is less than desirable, the practice by I’m Halal does fall under the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. Educational institutes, he concludes, should be free to determine which search engines to use in classes provided that the education offered is ‘open toward society as a whole and adheres to the diversity within it’.

CIS in collaboration with NEWS announces Shadow Search, an open call for proposals to explore the use of natural-language search algorithms that are able to find people and activities that embody the self-understanding of the kind of art we are seeking without specifically using the word art or a related vocabulary. In particular this search engine would allow prospectors in the world of information and databases to discover ‘shadow art activities’ that are partially hidden, off-the-radar, stealthy.

Shadow Search
Pertaining to the research we are conducting at n.e.w.s. in our forthcoming book, it is very important to be able to find art and artists that reflect the spirit of the query rather than just its literal content. We want to explore the use of natural-language search algorithms that are able to find people and activities that embody the self-understanding of the kind of art we are seeking without specifically using the word art or a related vocabulary. In particular this search engine would allow prospectors in the world of information and databases to discover ‘shadow art activities’ that are partially hidden, off-the-radar, stealthy.

Open Call for proposals
Cash prize: €1000 (the jury reserves the right not to award the prize if no submission fits the bill) Form can be found here. All submissions will be published online (with the exception of personal details). Please see send all entries to: shadow@northeastwestsouth.net

The selection procedure will take place over several stages:

• 15 October 2009 : Call goes out, submissions can be uploaded at n.e.w.s.
• 15 November 2009: Closing date for entries
• 20 November 2009: Final round submissions announced
• 23 November 2009: Winner(s) announced

Jury
Sunil Abraham, Nishant Shah, Pooja Sood, Ayisha Abraham, Stephen Wright, Prayas Abhinav, Renée Ridgway

Participation guidelines
Please send:

• a Pseudocode representation,
• a plain text description no longer than 500 words,
• if required you can add a graphical representation along with the text.

Please also read the human readable version of this text by Stephen Wright: Shadow Searching

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.

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: