Inside LabforCulture: The society of the query

The society of the query

Blog: Inside LabforCulture
Autor: Timothée Guicherd - Data: 11 Lut 2009, 13:18

<small>Image by <link href="http://flickr.com/photos/myklroventine/2372327933/">Mykl Roventine</link> on Flickr</small>

I came across The society of the query and the Googlization of our lives, through Eurozine newsletter. Geert Lovink writes about how search engines changed the way we are dealing with information, and tackles the need to know how to write a proper search request, and the need to be able to critically interpret search engine results.
You will find also references to Joseph Weizenbaum, the information-and-natural-language-processing guru, creator of the computer-therapist ELIZA back in the 70's.

When Google holds more than 60% of the search engine market throughout the world, and when Wikipedia is criticized as being the new doxa, this article is definitely worth a read.

Here are some quotes from the article:

"Nowadays an altogether new phenomenon is causing alarm: search engines rank according to popularity, not truth. Search is the way we now live."
"(...) she had heard that Google was much better and easier to use than the Internet."
"the Internet is a great pile of junk, a mass medium that consists of up to 95 per cent nonsense"
"The signals inside the computer are not information. They are not more than signals. There is only one way to turn signals into information, through interpretation"

And other interesting links related to the subject:

The Googlization of everything, trying to look at Google's intents (a book will be published soon);
Scroogled, a novel imagining how the world could be "if Google were evil";
an online version of the ELIZA program.

Otagowane jako:
google, information management, information society, query

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Yes, we live in a surfeit of ranked information. And to keep our knowledge grounded there's no way other than learning, first, how to evaluate information from the internet, and second, how these search engines actually work.
I found this article "Evaluating Internet Information" from the Sheridan Libraries website, quite generic but with very interesting points - such as how to differentiate misinformation from disinformation or propaganda.

And about search engines:
"Internet search engines aren't like the databases found in libraries. Library databases include subject headings, abstracts, and other evaluative information created by information professionals to make searching more accurate. In addition, library databases index more permanent and reliable information.
(From original article: http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/index.html)

It also recommends two websites about advertising, positioning and other info related to search engines mechanics:
http://searchenginewatch.com/2156561
http://www.searchengineshowdown.com

And from the very Gloogle's blog itself, an introduction article about Google Search Quality :
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/20...uction-to-google-search-quality.html