Program 15.30 Coffee, Tea 15.45 – 17.30 Alternative Search 1 > P.07 Speakers: Matthew Fuller, Cees Snoek, Ippolita Collective
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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 TrouwAmsterdam 09.30 Doors open, coffee and tea 10.00 Welcome 10.15 – 12.30 Society of the Query > p.02 Speakers: Yann Moulier Boutang, Matteo Pasquinelli, Teresa Numerico, David Gugerli 12.30 – 13.30 Lunch 13.30 – 13.45 Book presentation by Konrad Becker > p.05 Deep Search: The Politics of Search beyond Google 13.45 – 15.30 Digital Civil Rights > p.05 Speakers: Joris van Hoboken, Ingmar Weber Program 15.30 Coffee, tea 15.45 – 17.30 Alternative Search 1 > p.07 Speakers: Matthew Fuller, Cees Snoek, Ippolita Collective SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14 TrouwAmsterdam 09.30 Doors open, coffee and tea 10.00–12.30 Art and the Engine > p.10 Speakers: Lev Manovich, Daniel van der Velden, Christophe Bruno, Allessandro Ludovico 12.30 – 13.30 Lunch 13.30 – 13.45 FLARF poetry performance by Ton van ’t Hof > p.12 13.45 – 15.30 Googlization > p.13 Speakers: Siva Vaidhyanathan, Martin Fuez, Esther Weltevrede 15.30 Coffee, tea 15.45 – 17.30 Alternative Search 2 > p.15 Speakers: Florian Cramer, Antoine Isaac, Steven Pemberton 20.30 – 22.30 Evening program > p.17 TrouwAmsterdam, De Verdieping INTRODUCTION With the Society of the Query conference - Stop Searching, Start Questioning -, the Institute of Network Cultures aims to critically reflect on the information society and the dominant role of the search engine in our culture. What does this high dependency on search engines to manage the complex system of knowledge on the Internet mean? What alternatives exist? What is the future of interface design? How do we deal with centralization on the Web and how does this relate to many social media platforms increasingly becoming more syndicated, divorcing content form structure? Search is the way we now live. At present, the reality of the information society is one in which we are increasingly confined to the use of information retrieval tools to create order and value in the vast amount of online data. Search has largely taken over from (directory-based) browsing and surfing as the dominant activity on the Web. With the search engine having become our main point of reference on the Web, its emphasis 3 on efficiency and service tends to cloud the nature of both the underlying technology as the ideologies embedded in its search logic. As the idea of a Semantic Web unfolds, the human versus artificial intelligence controversy is regarded with renewed urgency. The increasingly centralized computing grid invites critical questions about power distribution, governance, and diversity and accessibility of Web content, while on the other hand promising alternatives to the dominant paradigm arise in P2P and open source initiatives.With large investments in media literacy, what role might politics and education play in establishing an informed and technologically literate user base? In what might be dubbed the ‘society of the query’, this two-day conference aims to examine the key issues emerging around Web search and to contextualize developments within the fields of knowledge organization and interface design.The Institute of Network Cultures aims to do so specifically by bringing together researchers, theorists and artists, creating a space where there is room for speculation and open questions, as well as concrete projects and research. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 > SPEAKER SESSION 1 YANN MOULIER BOUTANG (FR) TrouwAmsterdam INESCAPABLE GOOGLE? ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE, ECONOMIC VALUE IN COGNITIVE CAPITALISM, 09.30 AND COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE Doors open, coffee and tea Google, the most-used search engine, has conquered a dominant position. For activists the question has become: how to get rid of it? Until research on the Semantic Web 10.00 (P. Levy) or ‘deep Net’ has produced results, Google will enjoy an inescapable monopoly. Welcome and introduction by Geert Lovink Google has become the emblem of cognitive capitalism because it has invented a new economic model relying on the controlled development of collective intelligence 10.15 – 12.30 > SESSION 1 > in networks, a kind of neo or post-market. Google has cleared the path for cognitive SOCIETY OF THE QUERY capitalism as the only way to survive in a world of communization of production MODERATOR: GEERT LOVINK through contribution and pollination. It combines free access as a necessary condition Due to the difficulty of managing the vast amount of dynamic content available for harvesting real economic value. Taking this into consideration is necessary when on the Web, it often lacks editorial review, and finding meaningful content has we want to understand how to cope with major search engines. 4 5 become increasingly dependent on technological resources. The traditional role of the expert-editor has gradually been replaced by the algorithm, introducing a > SPEAKER SESSION 1 specific logic and privileging mechanism for organizing Web content. In recent years, MATTEO PASQUINELLI (IT/NL) the growing dominance of a few main search engines has trigged many people GOOGLE’S PAGERANK ALGORITHM: A DIAGRAM to critically look at the way by which search engines rank and serve their results. OF COGNITIVE CAPITALISM AND THE RENTIER This conference session will focus on ‘searching’ on the level of the software and OF THE COMMON INTELLECT will discuss the notion of the organization of knowledge within the theoretical The origin of Google’s power and monopoly is to be traced to the invisible algorithm framework of both humanities and computer science. Can we trace the history PageRank. The diagram of this technology is proposed here as the most fitting description of knowledge organization, and what is the impact of the back-end algorithm, of the value machine at the core of what is diversely called knowledge economy, attention which is increasingly becoming the dominant means by which users acquire economy or cognitive capitalism. This essay stresses the need of a political economy and make sense of information online? of the PageRank algorithm rather than expanding the dominant critique of Google’s monopoly based on the Panopticon model and similar ‘Big Brother’ issues (dataveillance, privacy, political censorship). FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13 (continued) > SPEAKER SESSION 1 12.30 – 13.30 TERESA NUMERICO (IT) Lunch CYBERNETICS, SEARCH ENGINES AND RESISTANCE: NOTES FOR ARCHAEOLOGY OF TECHNO- 13.30 – 13.45 KNOWLEDGE OF SEARCH BOOK PRESENTATION KONRAD BECKER: Why was Norbert Wiener so worried about cybernetics that he decided to disseminate DEEP SEARCH. it as much as possible, with the precise intent to alert people of its risks? It is very likely THE POLITICS OF SEARCH BEYOND GOOGLE that he foresaw what would have happened to digital technologies once they adopted (STUDIENVERLAG & TRANSACTION PUBLISHERS, 2009) the cybernetics approach, intertwining the concepts of communication and control. As a follow-up to the Deep Search symposium, held in Vienna, Austria on November 8, Search engines are a direct consequence of cybernetics in terms of the history and 2008, The World-Information Institute has now issued the book Deep Search. The Politics philosophy of technology. What we need now is a new ‘archaeology of knowledge’ of the of Search Beyond Google. The volume, edited by Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder, actual developments of the different branches in search engine technologies. It would is a collection of 13 texts that investigate the social and political dimensions of provide an analysis of the techno-scientific discourse, envisaging its power-knowledge Web search and addresses urgent issues of culture, context and classification in connections and its ideological constraints. This critical attitude might introduce information systems. Article authors are Konrad Becker, Robert Darnton, Paul Duguid, resistance against the dominant discourse, both by using other methods of searching Joris van Hoboken, Claire Lobet-Maris, Geert Lovink, Lev Manovich, Katja Mayer, 6 7 and by creating ‘non-communicative’ open areas that are not susceptible to being Metahaven, Matteo Pasquinelli, Bernhard Rieder, Theo Röhle, Richard Rogers, archived or searched. and Felix Stalder & Christine Mayer. > SPEAKER SESSION 1 13.45 – 15.30 > SESSION 2 > DAVID GUGERLI (CH) DIGITAL CIVIL RIGHTS THE 1974 BATTLE BETWEEN HIERARCHICAL MODERATOR: CAROLINE NEVEJAN AND RELATIONAL DATABASE SYSTEMS In 2005, John Batelle characterized Google as a ‘database of intents’; a valuable archive Since the early 1970s, mathematicians and software engineers have been working on of individual and collective wishes. As the number of services offered by search engines concepts for relational databases. When the first commercial implementations became is expanding, large amounts of personal information are gathered, stored and used for available around 1980, they hit a rapidly expanding software market with a global turnover commercial purposes. The current technological climate seems to be one in which the that soon amounted to billions of dollars each year. Relational databases offered two user is virtually unaware of whom or what is behind the Web applications they use on advantages in comparison with the customary, hierarchically structured databases: a daily basis. How, for instance, does the intermediary function of the search engine First, their search procedures were strictly separated from the form of storing data; threaten digital civil rights such as the right to privacy and freedom of expression? and second, databases could be recombined at the will of their users without the support What role can politics play in protecting these rights? How can the way search of professional programmers. Despite these advantages, the conceptual shift in the engines are designed aid in protecting our autonomy, and how will the legal history of software did not occur without an impressive and revealing ‘battle of the framework concerning search engines be shaped? systems’ between the advocates of the two communities of software engineers. I will have a closer look at the debate between Charles Bachman representing the hierarchical and Edgar F. Codd representing the relational database concept during a staged encounter during the 1974 ACM conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan.