Society of the Query #2 program booklet by Institute of Network Cultures

Program November 7 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 8, 2013

Thursday – November 7

p.5

12:30 – 13:00

Doors Open

13:00 – 15:00

Session 1 Google Domination

15:00 – 15:15

Tea Break

15:15 – 16:30

Session 2 Search Across the Border

p.11

16:30 – 17:30

Session 3 The Art of Search

p.17

p.6

Friday – November 8

p.21

09:30 – 10:00

Doors Open

10:00 – 12:00

Session 4 Reflections on Search

p.22

12:00 – 12:15

Interview with Maarten Sprenger (NL)

p.25

12:15 – 12:30

Book Launch The Dark Side of Google by Ippolita (IT)

p.25

12:30 – 13:30

Lunch

13:30 – 15:15

Session 5 Search in Context

15:15 – 15:45

Tea Break

15:45 – 17:30

Session 6 The Filter Bubble Show

p.30

21:00 – 01:00

Party: I’m Feeling Lucky

p.35

p.27

Conference location:

Party location:

Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam Oosterdokskade 143 1011 DL Amsterdam

Roest Jacob Bontiusplaats 1018 PL Amsterdam

Rosa Menkman

p.19 Rosa Menkman

p.24 Kylie Jarrett

Thursday – November 7 # Alternatives Session p.18

p.40 Astrid Mager

p.44 Siva Vaidhyanathan

p.40

p.17

Dirk Lewandowski Moderator

Speakers Renée Ridgway

p.17 Renée Ridgway

p.18 Isabella Massu

Isabella Massu

13:00 – 15:00

Session 1 Google Domination #

p.6

Relative Truth

p.8 p.8 p.8 p.8 p.8 p.8 p.8 p.8 # p.8 # # # ki Astrid Mager Astrid MagerDirk Lewandows Astrid Mager DirkDirk Lewandowski Lewandowski an Vaidhyanathan SivaSiva Vaidhyanathan Alternatives Siva Vaidhyanath Truth Alternatives Relative Alternatives

# p.6 René König Relative Truth

15:15 – 16:30

Session 2 Search Across the Border

p.11p.12 p.13 p.11 Pemberton Steven Pemberton StevenThomas Petzold Min Jiang

p.13 Min Jiang

p.11

p.12 Thomas Petzold

p.13 Min Jiang

Session 3 The Art of Search Anja Groten

p.32 p.32 p.11 p.32 p.19 p.13 König RenéSteven ton Pember René König René König Rosa PayalMenkman Arora

p.12 Thomas Petzold

p.25 Maarten Sprenger

p.24 Antoinette Rouvroy

16:30 – 17:30

p.18 p.17

p.22 Geert Lovink

p.24 Kylie Jarrett

p.17 Renée Ridgway

Association

p.18 Rebecca Lieberman

p.18 Anja Groten

# p.18 Association Isabella Massu

p.18 Rebecca Lieberman

p.19 Rosa Menkman

p.22 Geert Lovink

p.17 Renée Ridgway

p.24 Antoinette Rouvroy

Friday – November 8

p.25 Maarten Sprenger

p.17 Renée Ridgway

p.18 Isabella Massu

Session

Moderator

Speakers

p.30 Miriam Rasch

p.22 Geert Lovink

p.25 p.30 Ippolita Miriam Rasch

10:00 – 12:00

Session 4 Reflections on Search

p.24 p.24 p.22 p.27 # p.27 # Kylie Jarrett Rouvroy Geert Lovink Antoinette Authority Jelte Timmer Jelte Timmer Authority

p.22 p.30 sch

Miriam Ra

13:30 – 15:15

Session 5 Search in Context p.27

p.24 Antoinette Rouvroy # Localization

p.18p.13 Rebecca Payal LieberArora man

p.27 p.25 p.27 JelteTimmer Timmer Maarten Sprenger Jelte

Authority Authority

p.28 p.28 p.33 Simon Knight Simon Knight Engin Bozdag

p.28 p.28 an p.8p.30 Simon Knight Simon Knight nath Miriam yaRasch h id a Va

p.30 p.33 # es agrnativ Engin Bozd Alte

Siv

p.28 p.28 p.33 MartinFeuz Feuz Martin Engin Bozdag

p.8 er ag id M r t s A p.25 Ippolita

L Dirk

p.32 Erik Borra

p.32 Noortje Marres 2 p.3 ig Kön é n Re

p.25 Maarten Sprenger

# p.33 Context Personalization Pascal Jürgens

p.25 Maarten Sprenger

p.18 Anja Groten p.25 p.29 p.29 p.32 # Ippolita Sanne Koevoets Sanne Koevoets Marres Noortje Personalization

p.25 p.30 Ippolita Miriam Rasch

p.18 Rebecca Lieberman

Association

p.29 p.29 p.32 Sanne Koevoets Sanne Koevoets Erik Borra

p.8 owski nd ewa

Session 6 The Filter Bubble Show

p.13 p.18 Payal Arora Anja Groten

p.13 Payal Arora

Localizatio

15:45 – 17:30

p.25 p.28 # p.28 Tantner Anton Martin Feuz Martin Feuz Localization

# p.33 p.33 Context Engin Bozdag Pascal Jürgens

p.25 p.32 # Tantner Anton Erik BorraLocalization

p.18 Rebecca Lieberman

Association

p.32 Erik Borra

Introduction

How often do you look something up online? Whether it’s on a laptop or smartphone, we’re searching the web wherever we are and at any given moment. ‘Googling’ has become so common we don’t give it much thought. However, search engines take part in shaping our knowledge and perceptions of the world. There is a world beyond Google - geographically, culturally and technologically speaking. It’s time to turn the tables and put the daily ritual of online search in the spotlight. 4.720.000.000 results in

0.18 seconds - are those billions of hits all reliable and objective? Is there a way to break out of your personal filter bubble? Stop searching, start questioning! Society of the Query #2 is an international two-day conference on search and search engines. Bringing together researchers from different disciplines, with artists, programmers and designers, the Institute of Network Cultures aims to give new energy to the discussion on search and search engines.

Program – Introduction

Program

0 p.4 wski o and

ew irk L

0 p.4 er Mag strid

p.41 Rosa Menkman

4 p.4 athan n hya id a aV

Alte

5 p.4 önig

Siv

éK Ren

es nativ p.41 Isabella Massu

lat

ive

Thursday

Tru t

p. n J 39 ian g

November 7, 2013 Ste

ven

p. Pe 42 mb ert

on Th

om p.42 as Pe tzo ld

p.38 Anja Groten

Association

12:30 – 13:00

Doors Open

13:00 – 15:00

Session 1 – Google Domination

15:00 – 15:15

Tea Break

15:15 – 16:30

ror a Session 2 – Search Across the Border

16:30 – 17:30

Session 3 – The Art of Search

p yal .37 A

Program – Thursday, November 7, 2013

0 ager

Session 1 13:00 – 15:00

Google Domination p.40

Moderator Dirk Lewandowski

p.45 René König

Even though it is the aim of the Society of the Query to broaden the scope of search beyond Google, it is nonetheless inevitable to pay attention to the dominance of Google in the search engine market – especially from the perspective of the Netherlands, where Google has a market share of around 95%. Despite the growing diversification of Google in terms of revenue, search is still its main source of income, while users still see Google as a free service. Lately the battlefield has shifted to search on mobile phones – could this change or even end Google’s domination? What are the implications of the low resistance of the Google monopoly against PRISM? Has the time come for alternative, independent search engines?

Speakers

p.40 p.40 p.44 p.44 p.40p.40 # # p.40p.40 p.44 DirkkiLewandowski # Astrid Mager Astrid Siva Vaidhyanathan Mager Siva Vaidhyanathan Alternatives Lewandows Lewandowski DirkDirk Mager Alternatives Astrid Siva Vaidhyanathan rnatives

Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results p.45 p.45 p.45 René König König René René K

ives

Speakers

Session 1: Google Domination, 13:00 – 15:00

Siva Vaidhyanathan (US) p.44 Siva Vaidhyanathan

and even a large company like Microsoft struggles in establishing its own Web search engine. However, even if an alternative search engine could be financed by a company, a state, or even a larger body like the E.U., this would still be only one alternative. This would for sure be better than nothing, but in our view, it would be even better having lots of alternatives. The key to establishing such alternatives is the search engine index, i.e., the database every search engine is based upon. As an ideal, the index is a complete and current copy of the Web. Only a few companies operate indices that come close to this ideal, and it is very difficult and costly for a company creating a Web index from scratch. Therefore, new developments in the search engine sector that come from smaller companies focus on vertical search like news or blogs, as it is a lot easier to build indices in these areas. Furthermore, companies not having access to large databases of the Web, and therefore not being able to innovate in this area can at least in part explain the current lack of competition in the search engine market. Some might see the major search engines’ APIs as a solution. However, these allow only a restricted access to the index, limiting queries by the number of results, and, more importantly, + Com through the ranking limiting the results to hits that are pre-selected plete Plane t algorithms of the search engine. Thus, an open search engine index is an infrastructure project that should be financed by state or the E.U. Such an index would facilitate competition on the search engine market and allow for lots of smaller search projects to be realized.

The Leviathan and the Cryptopticon: On the Intimate Relationship Between State Surveillance p.40 Corporate Dataveillance and p.40

Astrid Mager

Dirk Lewandowski

With the steady revelations throughout the summer of 2013 about the United States government’s programs and powers to monitor digital communication, mine metadata, and circumvent encryption, it has become clear that corporate habits once devoted to maximizing market p.45 share and targeting consumers serves a much larger and more nefarious René König interest. The culpability and responsibility that companies such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter have in an environment of coercive state tactics will be examined, while proposing strategies that active citizens might pursue to mitigate the dangers that massive state surveillance creates.

Astrid Mager (AT) Is Small Really Beautiful? Big Search and its Alternatives p.40 Astrid Mager

44 yanathan

Google can be blamed for its monopolistic position on p.40 Lewandowski Dirk market, its exploitation of user data, its privacy violations,

the search its possible collaboration with the NSA. However, blaming Google is not enough. Rather than being ready-made, Google and its algorithmic ideology are constantly negotiated in society. The ways in which the capitalist spirit gets inscribed in Google’s technical Gestalt by way of social practices will p.45 be shown, while at the same time looking at alternative styles of search René König through the lens of ideology. If Google embodies the capitalist ideology what ideology do alternative search engines incorporate? Are there true alternatives to big players or do smaller search engines also buy into commercial practices (e.g. by entering alliances with Google, Bing & co)?

Dirk Lewandowski (GE) Why We Need an Independent Index of the Web

40 Mager

p.40 Dirk Lewandowski

In recent years, there has been a lively discussion on ‘alternative search engines’. People argue that there is a need for alternative search engines, as there is only one dominant player on the search engine market,

Duck

15:00 – 15:15

Tea Break

Deep

erWe

Blast

http://deeperweb.com/ DeeperWeb uses Google search results which get arranged in tag clouds. Additional methods of topic mapping are implemented to assist users in identifying relevant results.

Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

p.45 René König

Giga

Dogp

Program – Thursday, November 7, 2013

ile

+ x

Blippe

Session 2 15:15 – 16:30

+ ge

StartPa

+ Blekko

net

etePla

ckGo

u DuckD

Search Across the Border #

Relative Truth

+ +

last

GigaB

eb eeperW

Relative Truth

Moderator p.39 Min Jiang

p.39 Min Jiang

p.42 Steven Pemberton

p.42 Thomas Petzold

It is little known in the west that elsewhere in the world Google is not a major player. Can we speak of cultural differences in the architecture of search technology? And in the way users search in, for example, the rural parts of India? In China, there is a separate search engine domain, leading to a different political economy of online search – geopolitically, linguistically and culturally. How can we oppose this to the libertarian, North-American values of Google?

Dogpil

rawler

MetaC

+ Yippy

p.42 Steven Pemberton

Speakers

Relative Truth

http://yippy.com/ Yippy combines queries from a variety of different sources, Minp.39 Jiang while also offering clustered results compiled in categories.

p.42 Steven Pemberton

p.42 Thomas Petzold

p.37 Payal Arora

p.39 Min Jiang

p.42 p.37 ton Steven Pember Payal Arora

p.42 Thomas Petzold

Program – Thursday, November 7, 2013

42 berton

7 ora

Speakers

Session 2: Search Across the Border, 15:15 – 16:30

Thomas Petzold (GE)

situation, we need further social and technical innovations to allow for better knowledge capacity building. This is an opportunity for both private and public players to try innovative social and technical measures to serve more users in more meaningful ways.

The Search Industry’s Five Percent Gamble p.42 Thomas Petzold

To support five per cent of the world’s languages suffices to reach the majority of the world’s population. This is the five per cent gamble made by the digital technology industry on global information and knowledge markets. Take Google Search as an example: although it is offered in a wide range of languages, more than ninety-five per cent of the world’s languages remain unsupported. A considerable gap remains, which is at best only partially addressed by the industry. Because of the investment costs needed in language support, the five per cent gamble is the direct outcome of the Return on Investment calculated by the industry in the overall context of internationalization and localization. The internationalization process makes sure that a piece of software is built language-neutral (and thus not biased towards any specific language), and the localization process then allows for different kinds of language and region support to be implemented. Recognizing the achievements in this domain, the five per cent gamble marks an important step towards making information and knowledge searchable and available for people. On the other hand, the benefits delivered and received by different language users differ greatly. The cost-benefit analysis of language support favours either languages that are relatively cheaper to support, say languages using Latin alphabets such as some European languages, or languages that have huge market benefits, say major world languages such as Chinese and Arabic. Clearly, the current trade-off between knowledge diversity and market efficiency is made at the expense of the former, and in favour of the latter. The current state of Internet search is neither satisfactory nor innovative enough to unleash the vast potentials of human knowledge. To improve the

Relative Truth

Min Jiang (US) Search Without Borders? On Borders and Chinese Search Engines

Relative Truth

p.39 Min Jiang

p.42 Steven Pemberton

p.39 Min Jiang

Blip

tPa

r Sta

p.42 ton Pembermedia Certain Steven

p.42

Petzold Thomas are thought to be distance-defying, unbounded by space. From the invention of paper to the latest telecommunication revolution, geography and borders, we are told, do not matter any more particularly when you can send a message to the other side of the world at the click of a mouse. However, Min Jiang argues the popular depiction of the search p.42 Thomas Petzold engine as a borderless, global medium is an illusion. Search engines have become increasingly re-territorialized driven by various geolinguistic, political-legal, technological and economic factors that supersede our cosmopolitan impulses. Drawing from previous work on Chinese search engines, Min Jiang will discuss the border politics of Chinese web search, focusing on four aspects: 1) geo-linguistic borders between Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other Chinese diasporic regions; 2) political-legal borders erected for web filtering and control purposes; 3) geo-technological borders automated by geolocation technological regimes; and 4) economic borders re-emphasizing ‘place’ over space and the localization of business. These factors have made web search an increasingly ‘parochial’ rather than ‘cosmopolitan’ activity, much to the contrary of our earlier dreams for the ‘borderless’ medium of search engines. Consequences of search parochialism and possible alternatives are offered to re-imagine what search engines could become.

p.37 Payal Arora

Payal Arora (NL)

www.completeplanet.com +

Chinese Cowboy Paintings as Western Art? The Making of Art Knowledge via Google Images in Rural India

kko

CompletePlanet is a comprehensive list of over 70.000 specialized search engines and databases.

Ble

p.37 Payal Arora

lan

teP

le mp

Youth at a rural cybercafé in India browse through Google Images for their school project on ‘Western versus Indian’ art. Images of cowboy paintings by Chinese artists surface, and gets demarcated as Western

12 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

Program – Thursday, November 7, 2013

ippe

Speakers (continued)

ag tartP

Session 2: Search Across the Border, 15:15 – 16:30

painting. While Mona Lisa is selected, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is not. Raja Ravi Varma wins a place in the Indian art portfolio due to his depiction of classic Indian themes. Drawing from eight-months of fieldwork on digital engagements by youth in rural India, Payal Arora grounds current enthusiasm on e-learning and global knowledge making through a postcolonial lens. As 600,000 villages are currently being connected in India through cybercafés, this serves as an opportunity to delve into how youth in villages are taking to search engines and facilitating online knowledge circulations. Specifically, we investigate what constitutes as ‘classic’ Indian and Western art in this novel context. Search tools allow for new opportunities for learning; yet, it is seen that this is subjective to mediations that are historical, political and technical. Informal learning appears to be liberated from formal curriculum; yet, such freedom brings deep and persistent (mis)education. Faith in search engines often triumphs over local teachers, serving as new authorities on art critique. Understandings on art through Google Images are locally designed and not necessarily in line with global curricula on classic art, creating cosmopolitanisms in global education. Overall, it is found that digital learning is creative but not necessarily ‘correct’ by formal education standards nor always compatible with global understandings.

Com

plet

ePla

net

http://www.gigablast.com/

Blek

Duc

GigaBlast is an open source, fully + transparent search engine which always ckG o reveals the reason behind its results ranking. It’s also ‘green’, 90% of its power usage relying on wind energy.

kDu

Dee

perW eb

Gig

aBla

Dog

pile

ler

raw

aC Met

+ y Yipp

http://www.metacrawler.com/ MetaCrawler utilizes metasearch technology to compile results from many of the Web’s major search properties delivering more relevant and comprehensive results. It includes sponsored advertising.

aCra

Yipp y

14 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

Met

Program – Thursday, November 7, 2013

wler

Session 3 16:30 – 17:30

The Art of Search p.41 Rosa Menkman

Moderator p.41 Rosa Menkman

p.41 Isabella Massu

p.42 Renée Ridgway p.42 Renée Ridgway

p.41 Isabella Massu

p.41 Rosa Menkman

p.41 Isabella Massu

Art – whether it’s fine arts, video, net art or something else – often reflects on or even is born from the newest developments in technology and from their malfunctions. This session will focus on the art of search and how search engines become artistic with their visual characteristics and features, shaping our cultural knowledge and approach to society. p.41 Rosa Menkman

Speakers

p.38 Anja Groten p.38 Anja Groten

Association

p.40 Rebecca Lieberman p.40 Rebecca Lieberman

p.38 Anja Groten

p.41 # Isabella Associatio n Massu

p.41 Rosa Menkman

Program – Thursday, November 7, 2013 p.41 Isabella Massu

p.41 Menkman

p.41 la Massu

p.38 nja Groten

Speakers

Session 3: The Art of Search, 16:30 – 17:30

Rebecca Lieberman (US) visually similar imgs is a reflection on the poetics of search. The project encompasses an ongoing series of artist books, animated GIFs, video projects and a browser-based art work. visually similar imgs is an investigation of how digital images move through the internet wilderness; how they are morphed, aggregated, mutated, repossessed, collected, p.42 Renée Ridgway emptied of their contents, and reinvested with new kindsp.42 of meaning. Renée Ridgway The project draws its source material and subject matter (as well as its name) from Google’s ‘Search by Image’, a search product released in 2012 that allows people to search with images instead of written queries; feeding banal images through the search (selfies, cat photos, family snapshots, porn) maps color, pixel density, and other formal elements to create a proliferation of new images that are ‘visually similar’. Rebecca Lieberman is interested in the seams and failures of this technology – in those moments where an image of a hand becomes pictures of rifles and an old man’s bald head, or some digital noise on a black square is transmuted into the texture of a dress or a night sky.

on holiday without his Kodak, documenting his small world, while others more professional handle the big one, observe, collect and give away the far away exotic. Photographic exhibitions are increasing, showing it all, the private and the precious as well, humanist photographers set the tone and say the world in picture. In 1955 the Family of Man exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York paints a portrait of humanity implying we all belong together. The exhibition is organized around 37 themes: love, birth, work, family, education, children, war and peace ...Today, the family has undoubtedly expanded, but so have appropriate tools of representation. Our daily pain is immortalized on the internet. The distant cousin takes charge of the Really Simple Syndication, the dangerous liaisons. In turn, other family members implement, participate, collaborate to weave the web and feel unstoppable in their illusionary function, to create meaning. Not too isolated from each other, not too close either, we like to be part of that family. We enjoy it, cherish it in search of similarities within this impalpable tribe. Exchanging gift without remorse from screen saver to instant postcard, a difficult choice among 106,118, 222,767 sunsets,160,669 horses and 239,879 births.

Anja Groten (GE)

Rosa Menkman (NL)

The Aesthetics of Power

Beyond Resolution

‘visually similar imgs’ p.41 Rosa Menkman p.40 Rebecca Lieberman

p.41 Isabella Massu

p.38 Anja Groten

Association

p.40

Anja is interest# Groten, designer and researcher based in Amsterdamp.40 Rebecca Lieberman rman ed in using external forces during her working process. ByLiebe designing Rebecca collective moments, she aims to go into discussion with the public and simultaneously provokes confrontation and the unexpected. During the participatory lecture, queries will be sent out to the public which will invoke the spontaneity of the attendants and will lead to a collective understanding of the request in that particular moment. The search results will be made tangible and transformed into a live design.

Association

p.41 Rosa Menkman

Isabelle Massu (FR) The great family of Man p.41 Isabella Massu

p.42 1950’s: first constitutions of family albums, pictures are multiplied, Renée Ridgway relocated, traded like cards. Tools are democratized, one does not go

18 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

p.41 Rosa Menkman

p.41 Isabella Massu

In the last decade scholars have avidly tried to raise awareness about the importance of understanding the complexities of the media landscape: protocols refer and are encapsulated in other protocols (Galloway ‘Protocol’, MIT, 2006) and evil media do never exist alone. The media landscape has become more and more compound, or in other words: a ‘heterogenous assemblage’. Rules and protocols change data to exist, move and to be reflected upon media through media resolutions. p.42 Resolutions are thus ultimately the settlement (a solution - but often at Renée Ridgway the same time a compromise) between two or more underlying themes or dimensions. Even though media might have never existed on their own, the complexities of its landscape have now moved beyond human recognition. The cost of all of these resolutions within media is that people have become unaware of (most) of them. Have we become bad at constructing our own resolutions, or are we just oblivious to them and their inherent compromises? If you know the question, you most probably already have the answer. It is time to examine how to uncover absent queries.

Program – Thursday, November 7, 2013

Program

Alternatives

p.44 Siva Vaidhyanathan

p.40 Astrid Mager

p.40 Dirk Lewandowski

Auth

ority p.44 Timm e

Jelte

r p.46 m Ra sch

Miria p.41 Rosa Menkman

+ CompletePlanet

Friday

p.45 René König

Relative Truth

p.38 in Fe uz

Mart

p Simo .39 n Knig

Loca

lizatio

p.41 Isabella Massu

p.39 Min Jiang

+ DeeperWeb

p.42 Steven Pemberton

p.42 Thomas Petzold

November 8, 2013

p.42 Renée Ridgway

p.40 e Ko evoe

Sann

p.46 sch m Rap Miria Engin .37 Bozd ag

p.3Con Erik B 7 text orra

GigaBlast

n lizatio

ca Noort p.41Lo je Ma rres

Perso

p.3 #7rra y o it EriAkuBthor

naliza

tion

Pasca p.39 l Jürg e

Jelte

p.44 r e Timm

p.37 g a Bozd

Engin

p.38 Anja Groten

p.40 Rebecca Lieberman

Association

09:30 – 10:00

Doors open

10:00 – 12:00

p Session 4 – Reflsections rgens on Search cal Jü

12:00 – 12:15 1 p.4 s Marre oortje

p.37 Payal Arora

+ MetaCrawler

p.39 ht ig n Kn

Simo

.39

tio naliza Interview with Maarten Sprenger (NL)

Perso

N 12:15 – 12:30

Book Launch – The Dark Side of Google by Ippolita (IT)

12:30 – 13:30

Lunch

13:30 – 15:15

Session 5 – Search in Context

15:15 – 15:45

Tea Break

15:45 – 17:30

Session 6 – The Filter Bubble Show

21:00 – 01:00

Party: I’m Feeling Lucky

Yippy

Program – Friday, November 8, 2013

Session 4 10:00 – 12:00 p.38 Kylie Jarrett

p.38 Kylie Jarrett

Reflections on Search Moderator

45 nk p. ovi tL r ee

p.45 Geert Lovink

p.38 Kylie Jarrett

43 ng p. pre S n rte

p.43 Maarten Sprenger

p.43 Is it possible to analyze the search engine as a cultural artifact? Does it have Rouvroy Antoinette aa M a philosophical agenda and how can we read it? Search is often overlooked as an important part in the fast changing field of knowledge production. It is only dealt with in a mathematical and statistical fashion or with a focus on its economic significance as a tool of corporate power. But search did not p.43 commence in the late 90s – it has been around for centuries. It’s important to Antoinette Rouvroy stress the media-archeological approach, since the history of search, digital or analogue, offers many insights into its cultural meaning.

p.38 Ippolita

Speakers

p.38 Kylie Jarrett

p.43 Antoinette Rouvroy

p.43 Anton Tantner

p.43 Maarten Sprenger

p.45 Geert Lovink

p.38 Ippolita

22 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results p.43 Anton Tantner

p.45 Geert Lovink

p.43 Maarten Sprenger

p.38 Kylie Jarrett

Speakers p.38 Kylie Jarrett

p.38 Kylie Jarrett

Kylie Jarrett (IRE)

Anton Tantner (AT)

Search for the Google God: Metaphysics and the Social Imaginary of Search

Towards a History of Search in the Analogue Age: Human Search Engines and Intelligence Offices

To understand the history of search it is important to do more than document a series of technical developments and the rise and fall of particular economic entities. It is also about understanding the underlying social imaginary that has animated the political, economic and technological changes through which search has evolved. Underpinning the history of search is a fundamental desire for a unifying metaphysical entity that can render the world comprehensible. It is in the promise of providing such a technology that Google and its ‘mind-reading’ search algorithms emerge as powerful actors. This discussion will briefly trace the metaphysical desires articulated in historical information management technologies, as well as specifying how Google relates to the contemporary desire for a universal, but individualized, knowledge system.

Antoinette Rouvroy (BE) Algorithmic Governmentality and the End(s) of Critique p.43 Antoinette Rouvroy

p.43 Antoinette Rouvroy

p.38 Ippolita

p.43 Anton Tantner

Session 4: Reflections on Search, 10:00 – 12:00

p.38 Ippolita

p.45 Geert Lovink p.45 Geert Lovink

Algorithmic personalization is characterised primarily by the two following movements: a) dissipation of all forms of transcendent ‘scale’, p.43 ‘benchmark’, or hierarchy, in favour of an immanent normativity evolving Maarten Sprenger in real time; b) avoidance of any confrontation with individuals (meaningp.43 making subjects) whose opportunities for subjectivation have become Maarten Sprenger increasingly scarce. This dual movement is the consequence of the focus on relations rather than substances in contemporary statistics or data mining. To what extent are these two aspects of the ‘algorithmic personalization’ – emancipatory as they may appear with regard to ‘old’ hierarchies and with regard to ‘old’ conceptions of the subject as a stable, unitary entity – conducive to new processes of individuation? p.38 Simondon and Ippolita Deleuze-Guattari show that the possibility of becoming and of processes of individuation through relations necessarily require disparities – a heterogeneity of scales, a multiplicity of regimes of existence that algorithmic personalization is continuously stifling. Algorithmic personalization, folding up individuation processes on the individual monad, tends to foreclose the emancipatory perspectives p.43 Anton Tantner of these philosophers. In the ‘big data era’, the goal of individual and collective individuation is inseparable from an epistemic and semiotic critique of the algorithmic production of what counts as real.

p.43 Anton Tantner

Problems that haunt us today such as privacy issues, poor observance of the secrecy of registered data and government use of these services were also relevant in early modern and modern times that knew ‘human search engines’ such as go-betweens, servants and concierges, and institutions such as intelligence offices, bureaux d’adresse or question offices. By focusing on these two types of „analogue search engines’ Anton Tantner wants to stress that an historical approach to the ‘pre-history’ of search engines can be useful in reflecting the current conflicts that are aroused by companies such as Google.

p.45 Geert Lovink

p.45

Geert Lovink 12:00 – 12:15

Interview with Maarten Sprenger (NL)

p.43 Antoinette Rouvroy

Maarten Sprenger is the author of a recently published book for p.43 Maarten Sprenge children and adults about searching for valuable information online (Slim zoeken op internet). He has extensive experience in teaching about online search and also maintains a search engine especially for children: 8-12.info. He will be talking about his recent projects with Geert Lovink.

p.43 Maarten Sprenger

12:15 – 12:30

p.38 Ippolita

p.43 Anton Tantner

12:30 – 13:30

Book Launch – The Dark Side of Google by Ippolita (IT) The Dark Side of Google by Italian writers collective Ippolita offers a thorough, serious analysis of what’s behind the universe of Google and the metadata industry. Google has been a master at taking advantage of our need for simplicity. We sit before a colossus, an incredibly pervasive system of managing knowledge, comprising aggressive marketing and shrewd management of its own image, and the propagation of highly configurable interfaces that are still implacably recognizable. There has also been the cooptation of the methods for developing Free Software, the use of futuristic systems for gathering and storing data. What lies behind the most consulted search engine in the world? First published in Italian in 2007, the INC presents the revised and updated English edition in the series Theory on Demand #13.

Lunch

p.43 Tantner 24 Anton Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

Program – Friday, November 8, 2013

Session 5 13:30 – 15:15

Search in Context Moderator

Authority

p.38 Martin Feuz

There is a long-term cultural shift in trust happening, away from the library, p.39 p.40 algorithms. What does the book store, even the school towards Google’s Simon Knight Sanne Koevoets that mean? How are search engines used in today’s classrooms and do teachers have enough critical understanding of what it means to hand over authority? We think we find more and in a faster way, while we might actually find less or useless information. The way we search is related to the way we # context? see the world – how do we learn to operate in this Context

Blippe

Comp

p.44 Jelte Timmer

letePla

net

Authority

Blekko

http://blekko.com/ +

provides an innovative search experience by delivering high quality, curated results and organizing content into categories. It’s also a mobile app and social news platform.

DuckD Blekko uckGo

Authority

p.38 p.38 Martin Feuz Martin Feuz

p.44 p.44 Speakers Jelte Timmer Jelte Timmer

StartPa

Authority

p.44 Jelte Timmer

p.39 p.39 Simon Knight Simon Knight

p.38 Martin Feuz

p.40 p.40 Sanne Koevoets Sanne Koevoets

Program – Friday, November 8, 2013

Deepe

p.39 Simon Knight

p.40

rity

Speakers

Session 5: Search in Context, 13:30 – 15:15

p.44 Jelte Timmer

p.38 Martin Feuz

Simon Knight (UK)

pex

Blip

Finding Knowledge: What it Means to ‘Know’ in the Age of Search p.39 Simon Knight

https://www.blippex.org/

p.40 invitesSanne the Koevoets audience

In this talk, Simon Knight to consider their own educational experiences, and the nature of their access to external resources in examinations and other assessments. While some may have experienced open book or take home exams, these are certainly not commonplace. Denmark – which at school and university level has permitted some access to the internet# during exams – thus stands in p.44 # Context stark contrast to many people’sAuthority experience. There is Timmer a discordance here; Jelte on the one hand, the ubiquity of the ‘course book’ is in decline, and neither teachers or students find being sent to a single pre-moderated text acceptable now. Yet on the other hand, there is a nervousness + t lane about these new technologies in most countries and their suitability teP for ple m Co educational purposes. This is perhaps in part due to concerns around p.39 Knight Simon the suitability of search engines as ‘epistemic tools’ – as informants that can reliably give us information. There are two sides to this issue, the biases and inadequacies of both the tools, and the users. This talk will + discuss some search engine features within that framing of ‘epistemic kGo Duc k c u tools’, highlighting why Simon Knight thinks it is a useful consideration, D and its particular implication for educational contexts.

kko

Ble

Sanne Koevoets (NL) p.40 Sanne Koevoets

last

aB Gig Context

eb erW

Martin Feuz (UK) Exploratory Health Search: Models, Assumptions and Extended Cognition

p.40 Sanne Koevoets

Blippex ranks the search results based on the time people spent on a website, at the same time being an anonymous and private engine.

p.38 Martin Feuz

p Dee

p.38 Martin Feuz

rtPa

Sta

A cultural shift in trust is also manifest in the context of health information search. This talk sets out from the widespread phenomena of health information search and self-diagnosis using search engines. It critically reflects on assumptions underlying models of online interactivity and the biopolitics of statistically derived knowledge in evidence-based medicine. By introducing cognition understood as socially distributed extended into and performed through the artifactual and social environment – Martin Feuz proposes to rethink the design for exploratory health information interaction.

Library Dwelling: Quest and Query Tropes in Narratives on Libraries and the Internet In the cultural imaginary the library stands as a symbol of the modernist quest for universal, objective knowledge. The internet and the library have for a long time been used as metaphors for one another. Library theories have for a long time described the library as a network of knowledge, whereas early utopian writing on the internet presented this new technology as the final realization of the ‘universal library’. Both the library and the internet have been described, represented, and narrated in ways that bely underlying assumptions as to how knowledge can be ‘found’ or ‘discovered’ in spaces of knowledge. But although both involve technological systems of order, discipline, and control, this metaphorical slippage obscures how different systems of indexing and ordering privilege different ways of searching for and engaging with knowledge. This presentation will engage with the narrative construction of the internet as a Universal Library in popular culture, and show that while traditional library narratives (Borges, Eco) were aimed towards unveiling + chaos behind the semblance of order, utopian internet as-UL the e gpil Do (Langford, Thiem) narratives revel in the of chaos without + semblance ler raw The narrative trope of the revealing the underlying systems of control. taC e M library Quest, in other words, served to provide the hero with the insight that knowledge exists in an impenetrable labyrinth. The narrative trope of the Query, on the other hand, presents that insight as fact, without revealing the underlying systems of control. + y

p Yip

Context

28 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

15:15 – 15:45

Tea Break

Program – Friday, November 8, 2013

Session 6 15:45 – 17:30

The Filter Bubble Show Moderator

p.46 Miriam Rasch

37 ozdag

1 arres

0 p.4 er Mag

Since Eli Pariser’s influential book The Filter Bubble appeared in 2011, a range p.46 p.46 Miriam Rasch # of researchers have empirically tried to validate Miriam Raschor debunk the proposition Localization of the filter bubble. Is it truly so that the person sitting next to you gets a different search result while using in the same keywords? What do you actually see when you type ‘9/11’ in the Google autocomplete search bar in Baghdad and in New York? What are#the long-term effects of personalization # Localization p.37to a ‘relative and localization and their tendency Localization truth’? We need to find a Erik Borra way to take our Twitter, Facebook and search engine profiles to burst the bubble and understand society. p.37 Engin Bozdag

# Speakers

Personalization 0 p.4 owski d wan e L Dirk

trid

p.39 Pascal Jürgens

p.41 Noortje Marres

p.3 Erik B 7 orra

5 p.4 ig ön né K

p.37 Engin Bozdag

p.41 Per sonalization Noortje Marres

p.37 Erik Borra

# p.39 Pascal Jürgens Personalization

p.37 Erik Borra

p.46 Miriam Rasch

Localization

p.39 p.37 Pascal Jürgens Engin Bozdag

p.37 Erik Borra

30 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results p.41 Noortje Marres

p.39

40 Mager

Speakers p.46 Miriam Rasch

Erik Borra (NL) and René König (GE) p.40 Dirk Lewandowski p.37 Erik Bo rra

p.45 René König

Googling 9/11: The Perspectives of a Search Engine on a Global Event When one searches for 9/11 there are numerous aspects which the query can point to: one may want to locate books or movies about the attacks of 11 September 2011 and its implications, inquire about the 9/11 commission, pay a visit to the 9/11 memorial museum in New York etc. As this event had broad cultural and political implications, many diverse perspectives exist. For example, by insinuating that 9/11 was an ‘inside job’ + et Plan by the US government, the so-called ‘9/11 Truth Movement’ has pro - p.37 Engin Bozdag lete p om C vided a fairly popular account which vastly contradicts the mainstream version. p.46 Search engines need to determine which ten sites to return Miriam Rasch as the top results for any query. As so many people rely on search on a daily basis it thus becomes interesting to study which results are deemed + most important for specific queries. We stored the Google results for the Go p.41 uck D k c query ‘9/11’ for over five years. We then identified the types retur- Marres Du of sites Noortje ned (are these government sites, commemoration sites, sites providing # alternative explanations, etcetera) and investigate their ranking over Localization time. We further inquire which kinds of information are available by doing a historical content analysis of these sites. Last but not least, we compare Google’s query suggestions for 9/11 in different countries. We are thus able to show how Google represents a complex issue such as 9/11 over time.

https://startpage.com/ #

Localization

StartPage offers ‘pure’ search results generated by Google, while being fully private and without collecting user information based on history or location.

kko

Ble

p.37 Erik Borra

Pascal Jürgens (GE) Measuring Personalization: An Experimental Framework for Testing Technological Black Boxes #

p.39 Pascal Jürgens st

Personalization

la igaB

rWe

pe Dee

Noortje Marres (NL) The Query as a Tool for Understanding Society Do #‘we need to find p.39 a way to take our Twitter, Facebook and search Jürgens Pascal to burst the bubble and understand society’ or is that already happening on a large scale, as search engines are endowed with almost magical capacities to reveal societal dynamics. Apparently, the filter bubble, the idea that digital media lock us into a myopic vision of the social world, is only a problem at the front end. In her talk, Noortje Marres will criticize the widespread belief in the capacity of search engines, and query data more specifically, to reveal the social world. Marres argues that it implies a naturalistic and unreflexive understanding of the search engine as a sociological machine. To make a query is to apply a method and this applies to all queries. What we must then learn to appreciate is that social research has become a generalized activity, one in which we participate ‘whether we like it or not.’

pile

Dog

engine profiles Personalization

32 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

rtPa

Sta

p.37 Erik Borra

p.37 Engin Bozdag

p.41 Noortje Marres

Session 6: The Filter Bubble Show, 15:45 – 17:30

pex

Blip

Search engines vastly enhance people’s daily lives by making information more accessible. At the same time, they harbor an enormous potential for influencing users. Personalized search results further expand this potential because they explicitly aim at maximizing the relevance of delivered content with regard to selection decisions. Despite their relevance, these technologies have rarely been subject to social scientific scrutiny – mainly because they operate as black boxes and their effects can only be observed in the field, where confounding variables abound. Building on a method developed by Feuz, Fuller, and Stalder, the goal is to create synthetic user profiles and stimulate personalization. By prop.46 grammatically simulating realistic user behavior, this method performs Miriam Rasch hypothesis tests against unknown algorithms such as Google’s personalization. Our results indicate although personalization of search + that ler raw of now) are too weak to produce a true results does occur, its effects (as taC e M ‘Filter Bubble’ in which two users receive truly distinct content. #

Localization

Engin Bozdag (NL) p.37 Engin Bozdag

+ y

p Yip

Does Culture Affect Information Diversity? An Empirical Study of Information Diversity for Dutch and Turkish Twitter Users p.37 Erik Borra

Some authors argue that social media can cause citizens to be ill informed about current events and may lead citizens to have increasingly idiosyncratic perceptions about the importance of current events and p.41 Noortje Marres

Personalization

p.39 Pascal Jürgens

Program – Friday, November 8, 2013

Rosa

Speakers (continued)

p.41 an Menkm

Program

Session 6: The Filter Bubble Show, 15:45 – 17:30

p.41 su lla Mas

21:00 – 01:00

pex Blip occur

political issues. This might because online services can implicitly filter information in order improve accuracy at the expense of serendipity. Users can also themselves explicitly personalize their incoming feed and political groupings and fragmentation may occur where users follow only like minded users. This might lead to + so-called ‘echo chambers’ or ‘filter age opinions that they agree with, bubbles’ in which users get to see tPonly Star and information from the sources they ‘liked’ before. Excessive personalization may lead to never seeing the other side of an argument and + fostering an ill informed political discourse. Implicit personalization thus o lekk Bmay lead to an automatic cyberbalkanization, an unhealthy distaste for the unfamiliar. While these dangers are highlighted by several authors, few empirical studies exist that actually studies opinion diversity in social networks. In this talk, Engin Bozdag first provides two different norms to evaluate information diversity: reflection and openness. Later, he discusses the results of his recent empirical study to see whether filter bubble occurs in Twitter, for Dutch and Turkish users.

net

ePla

Isabe

3 roy p.4 Rouv e ett

p.38 Feuz

Martin

atives

p.40 Dinga ski Vicentiu wandow

Dirk Le

p.40 ager trid M

Ipp

p.44 Siva Vaidhya nathan

Altern

p.40 Astrid Mag er

p.39 Knight

# p.43 tner Authority Tan n to An

René Kö

p.44 Jelte Timmer

Rosa

Vicen

Patricia de Vries

p ella .41 Ma ssu

Isab

p.46 Miriam Rasch

Giga

ity

aliz

Context p.45 König

p Ipp .38 olita

atio

2 y p.4 gwa id eR né Re

5 p.4 vink Lo

ert

ntext

Co p.37 Engin Bozdag p.4 p.41 Miriam 6 Rasch Rosa Menkman

p.41 Rosa Menkman René

p.4 eR 2 idg way

3 ger p.4 ren p nS rte reaet Ma Riphagen

ortje p.41 Ma rres

tion

p.46 Miriam Rasc

Erik p.37 Borr a

liza

tion

p.39 Pascal Jürgens Pas

Personalization

cal

p.41 Isabella Massu

Localiza

p.41 Isabella Massu

p.42 Thomas Petzold

ona

p.41 Noortje Marres

p.4 nT 3 antn er

Anto

p.37 p.42 Erik Borra Steven Pemberton p.41 Massu Isabella

p.39 Min Jiang

Pers

Marg

1 p.4 kman n .3e8 Anja apM s RoGrote n

p.41 nkman Rosa Me

p.3 in B 7 ozd ag

Eng

Sim

p.38 t Jarret

Kylie

p.3 9 Jürg ens

ocia

tion

Isa

# e Trut

3 roy p.4 Rouv tte

http://www.dogpile.com/

p.39 Min Ji ang

o iati

soc

p.42 Pembe rto

Thom p.42 as Pe tzold p.38 Anja Groten

Pascal

p.39 Jürgens

p.38 Anja Groten

p.39 Min Jia ng

rton

p.40 Rebecca Lieberman

old

Ant

Anto

p inett .43 e Ro uvro y

t za ali

p.42 as Pe tzol

Thom

c Lo

p.42 Pembe rto

37 ag p. ozd B gin

Steven

p.4 mas 2 Petz

Tho

p.43 roy uv te Ro oinet

3 r p.4 ntne Ta on

p.40 Rebecca Lieberman

p.4 n Pe 2 mbe

Steve

p as R m iria

Personalizatio

t 39 h p. nig K on im

ion

Associat

t p.39 Min p.37 Jian g Payal Arora

e Trut

rit

o th

Association

Gee

p.41 Noortje Marres

Relativ

Truth p.38

oten Anja Gr

r 44 e p. mm Ti lte

p rt

tive

p.38 lita

a liz

Ippo

r Pe

Visuals by Rosa Menkman n

p.3 Ippo 8 lita

tio

37 a rr Bo

p.43 n Ta ntne r

Anto

7 Payal n Ta Arora A Program –ntoFriday, November 8, 2013

ik Er

p.43 r ntne

p.3

39 ns p. rge ü lJ ca

s Pa

p. Paya 37 l Aro ra

Roest Jacob Bontiusplaats 1018 PL Amsterdam

41 re p. ar M tje

p.43 Anton Tantner

Rela

+ y Yipp

Persona lization p.43 Maarten Sprenger

Association

8 p.3 ten ro ja G

8 p.3 p.38olita Ipp Ippolita

ts 40 e p. evo Ko

e nn

Co Steven

wler

p.37 Erik Bo rra

34 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

p.4 a Lie 0 berm

ecc

aCra

Met

p.4 Noortje 1 Marres

Dogpile returns all the best results from leading search engines, including Google and Yahoo!, by analyzing all the results and eliminating duplicates.

Reb

p.43 Antoinette Rouvroy

e oin

pile

Dog

p.37 Engin Bozdag

38 uz p. Fe tin ar

0 an p.4 berm p.45 Lie GeertcLovink c a be Re

Relativ

Localization

Kylie p.38 Jarr ett

p.37 Engin Bo zdag

1 p.4 assu M ella

p.42 Renée Ridgway

Ass

Loc

p iam .46 Ras ch

Mir

Vries

rWe

pe Dee

vro

p.40 Dirk Lewan dowsk i

René

p.40 ts evoe nne Ko

p.39 ight on Kn

8 p.3 rrett Ja lie

t Blas

ine p.43 tte Rou

p.40 Sannep.Koevoets Astrid 40 Mager

Relative Truth Patric

ia de

p.44 Vaidhy anatha

p.44 er Timm

Author

p.38 Kylie Jarrett

Siva

p.38 Margreet Riphagen Feuz Martin

inga

Jelte

uckG

kD Duc

Anto

atives

p.39 Simon Knight

tiu D

Contex

Altern

Party: I’m Feeling Lucky

p.4 Me 1 nkm an

ation

Associ

p.38 ten ja Gro

p.38 Martin Feuz

p.45 René König

Patricia de Vries

Vicentiu Dinga p.40 ts oe Koev

p.45 René König

Simon

p.40 Dirk Lewand owski

p.45 nig

p.40 Dirk Lewandowski

Sanne

8 p.3 ta oli

44 p.# athan Alte idhyan Siva Va rnatives

p.40 Astrid Mager

ity

Author

Localization

44 p.p.44 mer Siva lte Tim JeVaidhyanathan

Alternatives

Biographies

p.38 Kylie Jarrett

Alternatives

p.44 Siva Vaidhyanathan

p.40 Astrid Mager

p.40 Dirk Lewandowski

+ Blippex p.13 Payal Arora

p.41 Rosa Menkman

+ CompletePlanet

p.41 Isabella Massu

Relative Truth

Blekko

p.45 René König

StartPage

p.39 Min Jiang

p.42 Steven Pemberton

p.42 Thomas Petzold

p.42 Renée Ridgway

p.38 Martin Feuz

p.45 Geert Lovink

p.40 Sanne Koevoets

p.30 Miriam Rasch p.43 Maarten Sprenger

Authority

p.44 Jelte Timmer

DeeperWeb

p.43 Antoinette Rouvroy

p.39 Simon Knight

p.46 Miriam Rasch

+ GigaBlast

Payal Arora is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communication. Her expertise lies in social informatics, digital leisure, new media spaces/cultures, edutainment and IT for international development. She has research experience in both the private and public sector on award-winning and grant-funded projects including the Kellogg sponsored speech-recognition literacy software for Hispanic immigrant youth in New York, the World Bank Development MarketPlace and HP funded project on karaoke edutainment television content in rural India and the National Health Foundation grant on the impact of technologicallymediated arts experiences on mental health post 9/11. She earned her doctorate in Language, Literacy and Technology from Columbia University, Teachers College in New York, a Master’s degree in International Policy from Harvard University, and a Teaching Certificate from the University of Cambridge.

p.38 Anja Groten

Association

Localization

+ Dogpile

Context

Payal Arora

in New Media. Erik is also the lead programmer for the Digital Methods Initiative and is currently involved in the European research project ‘Electronic Maps to Assist Public Science’ (EMAPS). Erik’s employment as a programmer is the continuation of his work for Govcom.org, a foundation dedicated to creating and hosting political Web tools. This work consists of mapping issue networks on the Web by using the Issue Crawler software, as well as devising new tools such as the Issue Feed (beta), Issue Scraper - which makes comparative analyses of webspheres (e.g. news spheres and blogospheres), a surfer pathway browser, and tag ecology visualizers. Together with artists and designers Erik worked on projects such as the WEX machine - a physical website recursively connecting the on- and the offline, iTea - an interactive RFID installation designed as a coffee table, tapemixer.com - a playlist recommendation mash-up between YouTube and Last.fm, and the IP-browser - an alternative browsing p.30 Miriam Rasch experience that foregrounds the Web’s machine habitat and returns the user back to the basics of orderly Web browsing. Erik earned his BSc and MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam. # Localization

Localization p.40 Rebecca Lieberman p.33 Engin Bozdag

p.38 Ippolita

p.43 Anton Tantner

p.37 Engin Bozdag

p.41 Noortje Marres

p.37 Payal Arora

Personalization

p.39 Pascal Jürgens

p.33 Engin Bozdag p.37 Erik Borra

p.32 Noortje Marres

p.32 Erik Borra

Erik Borra

MetaCrawler

# Personalization +

p.33 Pascal Jürgens

Engin Bozdag

Erik Borra is PhD candidate and lecturer at the University of Amsterdam’s M.A. program

Engin Bozdag is a PhD candidate in the p.32and Technology Department (Section Values No # ortje Marres Perso p.33 nalizaDelft of Philosophy) at the University of tion Pascal Jürgens Technology. He is the winner of NWO’s Mozaiek 2010 grant with his research proposal

Yippy

Biographies

Geert Lovink

Biographies (continued)

Localization

‘Lifting the fog from the cloud, a valuesensitive design for Cloud Computing’. His research will focus on ethical implications of personalization in cloud services. Engin completed both his MSc and BSc degrees in Computer Science, specializing in web based p.19 (Delft, 2008). Before joining TU applications Rosa Menkman Delft as a PhD student, he was working as a search quality associate in Google.

p.28 Martin Feuz

Ippolita

p.17 Renée Ridgway

Martin Feuz

Martin Feuz is a PhD researcher at the Centre p.29 forSanne Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of Koevoets London. His research focuses on exploratory search interactions and how such interactions can be meaningfully supported. #

Context

p.18 Anja Groten

‘Breit – Kollektives Ausbreiten’ and ‘Barmbek.tv’. Exploring collective modes of production she designs printed matter such as books and posters as well as visual identities, film titles and websites.

p.25 Ippolita

p.18 Isabella Massu

p.25

p.24 Rouvroy Operators’, Antoinette ‘The Invisible

Association Anja Groten

Anja Groten is an independent designer and researcher based in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam in 2011. Ever since she investigated the possibilities of an agonistic design practice (‘An Agreement to Disagreement – Why Designers need to Design Conflict’, June 2011). Anja has been involved in projects including ‘De Punt’, ‘Our Autonomous Life?’, the ‘SwapUpShop’,

Maarten Sprenger University of Ireland, Maynooth, responsible for teaching modules on digital media. Her research interest is critical analysis of commercial digital media, in particular those p.33 emerging forms Engin referred to as Web 2.0. Her Bozdag current research is focussed on applying feminist labour theories in understanding consumer labour in digital media contexts. She has recently published with colleagues a study of Google and p.32 the culture of search, # Noortje Marres on YouTube Personalization and she has also published and eBay. Her doctoral study investigated the discourse of consumer empowerment in the field of e-commerce, using semiotics and sociolinguistics to explore this representation. #

Chinese Internet. Prior to pursuing her doctor’s degree in the U.S., Jiang worked as an international news journalist/editor for BTV and CCTV as well as assistant to director for p.32 Kill Bill I in her native country Erik BorraChina.

p.33 Pascal Jürgens

Pascal Jürgens

Pascal Jürgens is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Communication at University of Mainz, Germany. Prior to obtaining an MA in the classic social scientific field of mass communication, he worked as a radio jourp.12 nalist. His research interests include political p.11 Thomas Petzold communication online, models of opinion on p.13 Steven Pembert Min Jiang Min Jiang dynamics, network analysis of social behavior, computational methods for content analysis and time series analysis in networked communication. Previous research involved (among other subjects) the German electronic petition Dr. Min Jiang is Assistant Professor of Comsystem, models of opinion dynamics with munication at UNC Charlotte and an affiliate back-channels, the use of twitter during the researcher at the Center for Global CommuGerman general election, event mapping nication Studies, University of Pennsylvania. through linguistic time series analyses and She teaches graduate and undergraduate # p.27 in social media. topic cycles courses in the areas of mass communication, Authority Jelte Timmer new media technology, global media and research methods. A recipient of several research grants, she was the first Research Fellow at UNC Charlotte’s Center for Humanities, Technology, and Science, a faculty p.28 member of the 2009 Annenberg-Oxford Simon Knight Simon Knight Summer Institute and a finalist in 2009 Knight News Challenge. Jiang received her Ph.D. in Communication from Purdue University in Simon has been working as a software engi2007. Her dissertation focuses on Chinese government networks, authoritarian delibneer since 2006 and has specialized in softeration, and civic/political participation on ware and systems testing since 2007, during Relative Truth

Ippolita is an international collective for p.25 convivial research and writings. InvestigaAnton Tantner tions and workshop topics include: (reality) hacking, free software and philosophy and anthropology of technologies. As a heteronomous identity, Ippolita published ‘Open Is Not Free’ (2005, it); ‘The Dark Side of Google’ (2007; it-fr-es-en); ‘In the Facebook Aquarium: The Resistible Rise of Anarcho-Capitalism (2012; it-es-fr). Ippolita’s independent server provides their copyleft works, exploring the cutting edge ‘technologies of domination’ with their social effects. Forthcoming project: Rites and Beliefs in Tech Everyday Practices. p.18 Rebecca Lieberman www.ippolita.net & info@ippolita.net

p.24 Kylie Jarrett

Kylie Jarrett

Kylie Jarrett is a lecturer in Multimedia at the Centre for Media Studies at the National

p.13 Payal Arora

38 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

Program – Thursday, November 7, 2013

8 Mager

Biographies (continued) which time he has consulted on a range of projects including government and financial services projects in addition to award winning e-commerce p.28 websites. Martin Feuz

p.29 Sanne Koevoets

Sanne Koevoets

Dr. Sanne Koevoets was a Marie Curie # fellow at the Institutum Studiorum research Context Humanitatis in Ljubljana (Slovenia), defended her PhD thesis at Utrecht University in 2013, and currently teaches philosophy and new media studies at Leiden University College in The Hague. In her research she focuses on the gendered dynamics of the library in the network society, with which she has engaged through the figure of the female librarian and the trope of the labyrinth.

p.18 Rebecca Lieberman

Rebecca Lieberman

Rebecca Lieberman is a interdisciplinary artist and designer based in Brooklyn, New York. She works across a range of disciplines and materials including sculptures, videos, performances, social experiments, and more recently, websites and other net-based art. Rebecca earned her B.A. from the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She has shown her work at Anthony Greaney Gallery in Boston, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, and Galerie der HfK in Bremen. She was recently named a 2013-2014 Public Access Design Fellow at the Center for Urban Pedagogy in New York City.

Studies of Science and Nursing Sciences from 2005 to 2010. From 2010 to 2012 she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the HUMlab, Umeå University, in Sweden and investigated search engines and algorithmic ideologies. Since 2012 she has worked as a postdoctoral p.30 researcher at the ITA, leading the project Rasch Miriam on ‘Glocal Search. Search technology at the intersection of global capitalism and local socio-political cultures’ (OeNB). She occasionally teaches at the Department of Social Studies of Science as an# external lecturer. Localization Her research is concerned with the Internet and society, search engine policies, algorithms and aspects of privacy, critical theory, as well as digital methods against the background of science and technology studies and technology assessment. p.33

Digital Sociology and is Director of the interdisciplinary research centre CSISP(Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process). p.19 Rosa Menkman

p.18 Isabella Massu

‘Sometimes ideas, like men, jump up and say ‘hello’. They introduce themselves, these ideas, with words. Are they words? These ideas speak so strangely.’ p.32 Erik Borra

Engin Bozdag

p.32 Noortje Marres

# Personalization

Isabelle Massu

p.19 Rosa Menkm p.33 an Pascal Jürgens

Noortje Marres

Rosa Menkman #

p.18 Anja Groten

p.8 Dirk Lewandowski

p.8 Dirk Lewandowski anathan # Siva Vaidhy

p.8 er Astrid Mag

p.8 ndowski

Dirk Lewa

Astrid Mager

Alternative

Dr. Dirk Lewandowski is a professor of information p.32 research and information retrieval at König University of Applied Sciences. the René Hamburg Prior to that, he worked as an independent consultant and as a part-time lecturer at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf. His research interests are Web Information Retrieval and users’ interaction with Web search engines.

32 Science and Astrid Mager is a scholarp.in König Technology Studies withReanéparticular interest in Internet technologies and socio-political developments. From 2004-2009 Astrid Mager worked as a research collaborator at the Department of Social Studies of Science, mainly on the project ‘Virtually Informed. The Internet in the medical field’ (FWF). She was also a lecturer at the Department of Social

40 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

Noortje Marres joined the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths in March 2011. Before that she was a Research Fellow in Science & Technology Studies at the University of Oxford, and a Marie Curie Fellow in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths. She studied sociology and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, and did her doctoral research at that same university and at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, École des Mines, Paris. Noortje was part of the team that built the Issuecrawler, an online platform for the location and analysis of issuenetworks, and is currently developing Issue Mapping Online. She convenes the MA/MSc

Association

Everyp.18 technology possesses its Isabella Mas su ent accidents. Rosa Menkman

own inheris a Dutch artist/theorist who focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in both analogue and digital media. The visuals she makes are the result of glitches, compressions, feedback and other forms of noise. Although many people perceive these accidents as negative experiences, Menkman emphasizes their positive consequences. By combining both her practical as well as her academic background, Menkman merges her abstract pieces within a grand theory artifacts. Besides the creation of a formal “Vernacular of File Formats”, within her static work, she also

p.18 Anja Groten

Association

Biographies

p.24 Kylie Jarrett

Biographies (continued) #

p.22 Geert Lovink

Relative Truth

ative Trut

p.13 Jiang

created work in her Acousmatic Videoscapes. In these Videoscapes she strives to connect both sound and video artifacts conceptually, technically and sometimes narratively. p.11 In p.13 Steven Pemberton Jiang 2011 Rosa wroteMinthe Glitch Moment/um, a book on the exploitation and popularization of glitch artifacts (published by the Institute of Network Cultures), organized the GLI.TC/H festivals in both Chicago and Amsterdam and co-curated the Aesthetics symposium of Transmediale 2012. Besides this, Rosa Menkman is pursuing a PhD at Goldsmiths, London under the supervision of Matthew Fuller and Geert Lovink.

p.11 Steven Pe mberton

p.12

Thomas Pe Pemberton Steven tzold

Steven Pemberton is a researcher at The Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) in Amsterdam. The focus of his research p.13 is on interaction and how the Payal underlying Arora software architecture can support users. Involved with the Web since the beginning, he organized two workshops at the first Web Conference in 1994, and chaired the first W3C Style Sheets and Internationalization workshops. He now chairs XHTML2 and leads the W3C Forms Activities. He is co-author of many current web technologies, including HTML4, CSS, XHTML, XForms and RDFa. He speaks and writes regularly on the effects of technology design, and for a while had a regular column on Teleac’s science radio program Teleskoop. p.13 Payal Aror

p.12 Thomas Petzold

p.24 Antoinette Rouvroy Thomas Petzold

Thomas Petzold, Ph.D., is a professor of media management at HMKW - University of Applied Sciences for Media, Communication and Economics, Berlin, Germany. He worked previously as a research fellow with the Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative p.25 Industries and Innovation, Brisbane, Australia. Ippolita His work is concerned with innovation capacities of media and communication caused by technological and social change. In particular, he looks at how computational innovation together with social innovation p.25 Anton Tantner affect people’s lives.

p.17 Renée Ridgway

Renée Ridgway

Renée Ridgway is an artist, free-lance curator, writer and educator based in Amsterdam. Her current research merges artistic and curatorial practice with digital economies in regard to online remuneration along with investigating the conceptual as well as technological implications of ‘search’. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA) and Piet Zwart Institute(MA) and has exhibited widely in the Netherlands and internationally. (http://reneeridgway.net) Ridgway is co-initiator and contributor to n.e.w.s.

(http://northeastwestsouth.net), a collective online platform for the analysis and development of art-related activities. Presently she curates and facilitates ‘Welcome to Econotopia - commons of the contemporary’, masters curriculum that addresses spaces of transgression, ranging from institutions of culture to contemporary hubs of spectacle to the internet. (http://dutchartinstitute.eu)

p.24 Antoinette Rouvroy

Antoinette Rouvroy

Antoinette Rouvroy, Doctor of Laws of the European University Institute (Florence), is research associate at the Belgian FRS FNRS (National Fund for Scientific Research) and lecturer and senior researcher at the Information Technology and Law Research Centre (CRID) of the University of Namur, p.25 Belgium. Ippolita She is particularly interested in the mechanisms of mutual production between sciences and technologies and cultural, political, economic and legal frameworks. Her doctoral research at the European University Institute of Florence (Human Genes p.25 AntonNeoliberal Tantner and Governance: A Foucauldian Critique. Abingdon and New-York, RoutledgeCavendish, 2008, looked at the knowledgepower relations in the post-genomic era. Her current interdisciplinary research interests revolve around the ethical, legal and political challenges raised by the new information, communication and surveillance technologies (biometrics, RFIDs, ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence, persuasive technologies,…) and their convergence.

p.25 Maarten Sprenger

Maarten Sprenger

Maarten Sprenger is art educator and also p.22 Geert Lovink focused on reliable and readable (Dutch) information for children, as done through 8-12.info. Since 2003 he has worked in primary education, as a teacher and as an entrepreneur. Formerly he has been a professor at the Rietveld Academy and he p.25 Maarten Sprenge organized art projects (television and new media). In addition to lessons and projects for primary schools in the field of art education p.24 e Rouvroy Antoinett and information literacy, Maarten Sprenger gives lessons to students of secondary education and training courses and workshops for teachers in primary / secondary education. Maarten Sprenger is the author of a recently published book for children and adults about searching for valuable information online (Slim zoeken op internet). He has extended experience in teaching about online search and also maintains a search engine especially for children: 8-12.info. He will be talking about p.25projects with Geert Lovink. his recent Ippolita

p.25 Anton Tantner

Anton Tantner

Anton Tantner is lecturer at the Department of History at Universität Wien. His research interests include the history of intelligence/

a p.18 Rebecca Lieberman

42 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

Biographies

rity

p.24 Kylie Ja rrett

Biographies (continued) registry offices in Europe, house numbering, and new media in historical sciences. In 2004 he defended a dissertation about the history of the census and house numbering in the Habsburg monarchy that# was rnatives published in 2007 as Ordnung derAlteHäuser, Beschreibung der Seelen. Hausnummerierung und Seelenkonskription in der Habsburgermonarchie (=Wiener Schriften zur Geschichte der Neuzeit; 4). Innsbruck/Wien/Bozen: Studienverlag, 2007.

p.27 Jelte Timmer

Jelte Timmer

Jelte Timmer is a Junior Researcher and focuses on the subjects of captology in online p.28 services and e-government security. Simon Knight Jelte started his studies at Utrecht University doing Social Psychology, from there he went on to study Arts policy and management and finally New Media and Digital Culture. He has worked with Mediamatic in Amsterdam and was one of the founding members of the Utrecht medialab called SETUP. He combines the insights derived from psychology and cultural practices to reflect on societaltechnological developments.

p.8 n hyanatha Siva Vaid

p.8 ager Astrid M

Team

p.8 i andowsk

Dirk Lew

Siva Vaidhyanathan p.32 ig

René Kön

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a cultural historian and media scholar, and is currently the Robertson Professor in Media Studies at the University of Virginia. From 1999 through the summer of 2007 he worked in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University. Vaidhyanathan is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodip.28 Martin Feuz cals including the Chronicle of Higher Educap.24 Antoin ett e Rouvr tion, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, oy and Salon.com, and he maintains a blog, www.googlizationofeverything.com. He is a frequent contributor to National Public Radio and to MSNBC.COM and has appeared in p.29 Sanne Koevoets a segment of ‘The Daily Show’ with Jon Stewart. Vaidhyanathan is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for the Future of the Book. In 2011 he was appointed chair of UVA’s Department of # Media Studies. Context

p.25 # Ippolita Alternatives

Anton

p.25 Tantne r

p.8 Siva Vaidhyanathan

Vicentiu Dinga

Patricia de Vries

p.8 Astrid Mager

Vicentiu Dinga

Vicentiu Dinga, research intern at INC, graduated the New Media and Digital Culture Master of Arts at the University of Amsterdam in 2013. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism (2011, Bucharest). Vicentiu has first started work as an editor and contributing editor for several publications in Romania, online and printed press, writing about media and technology. He became the Project Manager of one of the most important cultural cooperative blogs in Romania, bookblog.ro, where he managed special projects and cultural events. Vicentiu has Margreet Riphagen been working in social media and online marketing since 2011 being part of side projects and working with various brands, local and p.8 international. Dirk Lewandowski

p.32 René König

René König

René König is a sociologist researching at Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of

44 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

Technology. Together with Michael Nentwich he recently published the book ‘Cyberscience 2.0: Research in the Age of Digital Social Networks’ at Campus (Frankfurt a.M./New York) which analyzes transformation processes in academia triggered by Web 2.0. Currently, König works on his PhD thesis, focusing on online search behavior in the context of scientific controversies. He is a co-organizer of the Society of the Query conference and he is editing the upcoming related reader with Miriam Rasch.

p.22 Geert L ovink

Geert Lovink

Geert Lovink, founding director of the Institute Cultures, is a Dutch-Australian media theorist and critic. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and in 2003 was at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland. In 2004 Lovink was appointed as Research Professor at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and Associate Professor at University of Amsterdam. He is the founder of Internet projects such as nettime and fibreculture. In 2005-06 he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin Institute for Advanced Study where he finished his third volume on critical Internet culture, Zero Comments (2007). Since then he published the book Networks Without a Cause (2012), which has been translated into German and Italian. Other books titles by Geert Lovink are The Art of Free Cooperation (2007), The Principle of Notworking (2005), and My First Recession (2003).

p.25 Mof aarteNetwork n Spre nger

Biographies

nga p.33 Bozdag

p.32 Marres

Biographies (continued)

p.30 Miriam Rasch

Miriam Rasch

Miriam Rasch started working as a publication # manager at the Institute of Network Cultures Localization in June 2012. She holds a masters degree in Literary Studies (2002) and Philosophy (2005). Since graduating she worked as a (web) editor and from 2008 on as a programmer for the public lectures department at Utrecht p.32 Erik Borra University, Studium Generale, organizing events and taking care of digital broadcasts and online representation. Next to that she worked as a lecturer for Liberal Arts and Sciences, and is teaching philosophy and p.33Information and # media theory at the Media, Pascal Jürgens Personalization Communication department. She writes book reviews and guest posts for different websites and magazines; her personal blog can be found on miriamrasch.nl.

Margreet Riphagen

For the last ten years, Margreet Riphagen has gained experience in various disciplines of new and interactive media. She hold a bachelor degree in Integrated Communication Management, a post bachelor in Business Science and a master in Information Studies, track Human Centered Multimedia. After

working at the Waag Society and Media Guild for more than five years, she now works for the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences since 2008. She is Vicent involved with various iu Dinga research projects at INC. Besides she works at MediaLAB Amsterdam that conducts applied research on innovative interactive media applications together with partners from the creative industries and education.

Blipp

Patricia de Vries

Star

Patricia de Vries is project coordinator at the Institute of Network Cultures, and is Margreet Riphagen responsible for coordinating current research projects. Patricia has an academic formation in Media Studies (BA), Cultural Analysis (MA) and Liberal Studies (MA). Over the years, working with several media, cultural and research institutions in different capacities, she gained a wide range of work experience in research, editing, and project and event management. Among other things, she worked as a film programmer at Studio K, as an editor of the art magazine Simulacrum, and as a marketing and PR assistant at Boom Publishing House. From 2010 until 2012 she was based in New York where she served as a research and communications associate at the think tank World Policy Institute, and as a teaching assistant of prof. James Miller at The New School for Social Research. Patricia joined INC in August 2013.

+ o

Blekk

net

tePla

ple Com

Duck

https://duckduckgo.com/

Blast

Giga b

erWe

Deep

DuckDuckGo uses information from many sources such as crowdsourced websites like Wikipedia, as well as other major search engines to obtain results. It also avoids the “filter bubble” by protecting privacy and user information. +

pile

Dog

46 Society of the Query #2 – Online Search, About 4.720.000.000 results

Credits

p.38 Kylie Jarrett

Alternatives

p.41 Rosa Menkman

CompletePlanet

p.41 Isabella Massu

DuckDuckGo

p.44 Siva Vaidhyanathan

p.40 Astrid Mager

p.40 Dirk Lewandowski

Organized by: Institute of Network Cultures, www.networkcultures.org

Blippex

Relative Truth

Blekko

p.45 René König

StartPage

p.39 Min Jiang

p.42 Steven Pemberton

p.42 Thomas Petzold

p.42 Renée Ridgway

Supported by: Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences Stichting Democratie en Media KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Editorial board: René König, Geert Lovink, Miriam Rasch Location: OBA Public Library Amsterdam Research: Vicentiu Dinga Visual identity: Studio Inherent All documentation will be available at: www.networkcultures.org/query Contact: Miriam Rasch: miriam@networkcultures.org

Authority

p.44 Jelte Timmer

DeeperWeb

GigaBlast

p.38 Martin Feuz

p.45 Geert Lovink

p.43 Antoinette Rouvroy

p.39 Simon Knight

p.46 Miriam Rasch

p.45 Vicentiu Dinga

p.40 Sanne Koevoets

p.43 Maarten Sprenger

p.38 Anja Groten

Association

Localization

Dogpile

Context

p.40 Rebecca Lieberman

p.38 Ippolita

p.37 Engin Bozdag

p.46 Patricia de Vries

p.37 Payal Arora

p.37 Erik Borra

MetaCrawler

p.39 Pascal Jürgens

p.46 Margreet Riphagen

Yippy

p.43 Anton Tantner

p.41 Noortje Marres

Personalization

Postal address: Institute of Network Cultures P.O. Box 1025 1000 BA Amsterdam The Netherlands Office address: Institute of Network Cultures Rhijnspoorplein 1 (corner Wibautstraat / Mauritskade) Room 04A07, 4th floor 1091 GC Amsterdam The Netherlands t: +31 (0)20 5951865

p.38 Kylie Jarrett

Alternatives

p.41 Rosa Menkman

CompletePlanet

p.41 Isabella Massu

p.44 Siva Vaidhyanathan

p.40 Astrid Mager

p.40 Dirk Lewandowski

Blippex

Relative Truth

Blekko

p.45 René König

StartPage

DuckDuckGo

p.39 Min Jiang

p.42 Steven Pemberton

p.42 Thomas Petzold

p.42 Renée Ridgway

Authority

p.44 Jelte Timmer

DeeperWeb

p.38 Martin Feuz

p.45 Geert Lovink

p.43 Antoinette Rouvroy

p.39 Simon Knight

p.46 Miriam Rasch

p.40 Sanne Koevoets

p.43 Maarten Sprenger

p.38 Anja Groten

Association

Localization

Dogpile

p.38 Ippolita

p.37 Engin Bozdag

p.46 Patricia de Vries

p.37 Payal Arora

p.43 Anton Tantner

p.41 Noortje Marres

Personalization

p.39 Pascal Jürgens

networkcultures.org/query

+ GigaBlast

p.45 Vicentiu Dinga

Context

p.37 Erik Borra

p.46 Margreet Riphagen

p.40 Rebecca Lieberman

+ MetaCrawler

+ Yippy