Critical Analysis of Geert Lovink’s Chapter ‘Society of the Query: The Googlization of our Lives’ in Networks Without a Cause

Google is one of the most powerful corporations in the world. Starting off as a research project by two university students, Larry Page and Sergey Binn, it is now the most popular search engine available on the internet (Alexa, 2013), with an estimated one billion monthly unique visitors, and its website ‘google.com’ was recently listed as the most visited website in the world (eBiz MBA, 2013). However such dominance always tends to open the door for criticism, the company has been criticised over a sensitive issue such as privacy (BBC, 2013) and others.

Geert Lovink is very critical of the corporation in his book ‘Networks Without a Cause’, in his chapter ‘Society of the Query: The Googlization of our Lives’ he states that
“With the rise of search engines, it is no longer possible to distinguish between patrician insights and plebeian gossip. […] Nowadays, an altogether new phenomenon is causing alarm: search engines rank according to popularity, not Truth. […] We no longer learn by heart; we look it up. With the dramatic increase of accessible information we have grown hooked on retrieval tools.” (Lovink, 2011: 146)

Lovink’s main argumentative points are that as a public, we no longer feel the need to learn academic knowledge as we can look it up using search engines such as ‘Google’. This is very alarming as on the internet anyone can post information and claim it to be factual. However, one may completely disagree with Lovink’s claim; whilst it would appear that many people may be dependent on the knowledge that the internet can provide rather than remember academic knowledge taught to them or learnt by them, it would be foolish to consider that people are solely dependent on the internet and prefer looking up information on the internet rather than remembering such information. Stating this would surely suggest that the majority of the world’s population would voluntarily choose to only attend the compulsory years of education required in each country. There would be no need for universities as people would prefer to search the internet for knowledge they need, which obviously isn’t the case.

Additionally, another counter argument is that is would be idiotic to consider all of the information available on the internet factual, whether it claims to be truth or not. The majority of the internet should always be considered an opinion, not factual knowledge. Whilst on the surface it does appear shocking that search engines would prioritise popular sites rather than truthful sites, it is up to the user to look for the factual sites, and only take information on the internet as fact if it comes from a reliable source. It makes no difference from someone writing a book or making a speech and claiming their opinions are fact, it will always be down to the audience to make the decision whether they believe if what is being presented to them is fact or fiction.

To conclude, Lovink makes good points about the concern of the internet and its damaging effects it can cause to knowledge, but he doesn’t consider the matter with an open mind. People can lie on the internet, however people could lie before the internet, the issue at hand of misleading information isn’t caused by the internet itself, its caused by its users and with or without the internet those people would still be able to spread misleading knowledge.

Bibliography

Alexa. (2013). How popular is google.com?. Available: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/google.com. Last accessed 13th December 2013.

BBC. (2013). Google privacy policy criticised by data watchdog. Avaliable: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23187771. Last accessed 13th December 2013.

eBiz MBA. (2013). Top 15 Most Popular Search Engines | December 2013. Available: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/search-engines. Last accessed 13th December 2013.

Lovink, Geert (2011) ’Society of the Query: The Googlization of our Lives’ in Networks Without a Cause, Cambridge: Polity, pp. 146-157.

Critical Analysis of Alexander Halavais’ Chapter ‘Censorship’ in Search Engine Society

With the development of internet, and other communication methods government surveillance and censorship has increased substantially for better or for worse. Surveillance by government and other agencies has been heavily criticised being immoral and unethical for the invasion of peoples privacy. For example, the Leveson inquiry about the news international phone hacking sandal raised serious questions about the morality of surveillance. The scandal consisted of several journalists working for the newspaper News of the World intercepting text messages and phone calls of the mobiles of several high profile celebrities or members of the public involved in high profile stories such as the murdered aged 13 school girl Amanda ‘Milly’ Dowler, where her voicemail was accessed by News of the World reporters.

Halavais wrote

“Google has found its informal corporate slogan – “Don’t be evil” – to be more of a stumbling block than it had anticipated. Because, at present, it is the most visible and most utilized general-purpose search engine, its effort to shape access to information have led to criticisms. The company has weathered censure for bowing to pressure by the Chinese government to filter search results, for bowing to requests by the US government to produce records of searches by users, and for presenting content to users (news stories, books, and images) without licensing the content.” (Halavais, 2009: 118)

Whilst Halavais makes some valid points concerning Google’s controversial actions, I don’t believe he is viewing the situation with an open mind. One might argue that the actions taken by Google, whilst seeming unethical, are necessary, for instance censoring the Chinese public’s searches, it denies the public their freedom of knowledge, however it only appears unethical to the Western world; one could argue it’s the Chinese Government’s choice, even if it is not the choice of the Chinese general public’s to have a controlling dictatorship, and in the eyes of the Chinese government they believe they are providing the best for their public, and who are we to challenge that?

In addition, the fact that Google allowed the US government access to private information such as search histories is on one hand an invasion of privacy, which is terrible especially considering the recent trouble the US government have run into with the exposure by Wikileaks, the website which showed evidence the US government were monitoring phone calls, text messages and other methods of communications used by the public, however I feel that this heavy surveillance is sometimes needed for the protection of the public, because one could argue that it can help prevent crime and terrorism had this surveillance been available to the government previously who knows what terrorist acts could have been uncovered before happening?

To conclude, I understand the criticism such intense surveillance and censorship receive, however I feel that before any criticism is presented you need to look at the idea of surveillance and censorship with an open mind, and understand that whilst it may appear immoral, sometimes it could be claimed that it is for the greater good of the public with the intent to help rather than harm. I feel that Halavais agrees with this idea writing “such utopian visions ignored the very real challenges that national governments were unlikely to overlook. “Thai child pornography, Albanian tele-doctors […]” among other objectionable content, were not only inevitable, but would inevitably draw regulators of national governments onto the net.” (Halavais, 2009: 118)

Bibliography

Halavais, A (2009) ‘Censorship’ in Search Engine Society, Cambridge: Polity, pp. 118-138