Posts By: Shirley Niemans

Deep Search ll: Panel 4, Contextual Modeling and closing discussion

By Shirley Niemans, July 11, 2010

Panel 4: Contextual Modeling An unstorable and unmanageable amount of data is coming at us, bringing with it a host of new strategies for grasping and analyzing the huge amount of bits and bites, such as visualization models. mc schraefel: Beyond Keyword Search Dr schraefel is reader in the Intelligence, Agents and Multimedia Group at [...]
During my research internship at the Institute of Network Cultures...

Define: Web Search, Semantic Dreams in the Age of the Engine

By Shirley Niemans, July 8, 2010

During my research internship at the Institute of Network Cultures in 2008/2009, I was given the opportunity to explore the broad field of Web search using the Institute’s elaborate network and the extensive knowledge of its staff, and to deliver an editorial outline for the Society of the Query conference. This research also culminated in [...]

Deep Search ll: Panel 3, Rent and Bias

By Shirley Niemans, June 26, 2010

Panel 3: Rent and Bias After dwelling in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century in the morning panels, Felix Stalder comments that the program’s strict chronological order will now lead us into the twenty-first century. Keeping the metaphor of the map and the mapmaker alive, the next two speakers will talk about the politics and [...]

Deep Search ll: Panel 2, Sociometry, Networks and Classification

By Shirley Niemans, June 11, 2010

Panel 2: Sociometry, Networks and Classification In a brief introduction, Konrad Becker mentions that the first speaker of this panel, Greg Elmer, is unable to make it to the conference. He is happy to welcome Sebastian Giessmann, as his focus on networking as a ‘technique of the social’ works well within the context of the [...]

Deep Search ll: Panel 1, Visions of Organizing the World

By Shirley Niemans, June 11, 2010

The second edition of the World Information Institute’s Deep Search conference series took place in Vienna on May 28. Where the first Deep Search symposium, held in November 2008 (find a review here) dealt with the history of information retrieval, the automatic classification of data, civil liberties, digital human rights, the power embedded in search [...]

Googolopoly

By Shirley Niemans, February 3, 2010

Internet board game from box.net
NYU professor Mushon Zer Aviv and his graduate class in...

NYU graduate class goes ‘A week without Google’

By Shirley Niemans, February 3, 2010

NYU professor Mushon Zer Aviv and his graduate class in (new) Media (networked) Culture and (distributed) Communication met quite a challenge this past week as the class assignment was to live and work for a full week without using any Google service. Read about the assignment, the rules and the outcomes on http://cultureandcommunication.org/tdm/s10/admin/a-week-without-google/, and be [...]

Deep Search II: Vienna, May 28 2010

By Shirley Niemans, January 21, 2010

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 [...]

I’m Halal Search Engine Controversy

By Shirley Niemans, November 10, 2009

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 [...]
Many will remember August 2006 when US Internet service provider...

I Love Alaska: On the AOL search data scandal

By Shirley Niemans, October 9, 2009

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 [...]