Boris Groys: Google: Words Beyond Grammar (2011)

In times when the exchange with the world largely takes place on the Internet, the search engine Google primarily regulates the parameters and formats of this conversation. For the philosopher and media theoretician Boris Groys, Google thus takes on the traditional role of philosophy and religion. Philosophical precursors for the dissolution of different kinds of discourses, the emancipation of words from grammar and accordingly their equalizing, as Google produces it, span from Plato to Saussure’s structuralism to Derrida’s deconstruction. Another analogy is the twentieth-century avant-garde’s production of word clouds that are freed from their context, in particular the Conceptual art of the 1960s and ’70s. As a result of the radical freeing of words, Groys names “the struggle for a utopian ideal of the free flow of information—the free migration of liberated words through the totality of social space.”

Publisher Hatje Cantz, December 2011
Series: dOCUMENTA (13): 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken No. 046
English/German edition
ISBN 3775728953, 9783775728959
36 pages

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Berin Szoka, Adam Marcus (eds.): The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet (2010)

This unique book brings together 26 thought leaders on Internet law, philosophy, policy and economics to consider, from a wide variety of perspectives, what the next digital decade might bring for the Internet. This book is essential reading for anyone gazing toward the digital future.

The book’s 31 essays address questions such as: Has the Internet been good for our culture? Is the Internet at risk from the drive to build more secure, but less “open” systems and devices? Is the Internet really so “exceptional?” Has it fundamentally changed economics? Who—and what ideas—will govern the Net in 2020? Should online intermediaries like access providers, hosting providers, search engines and social networks do more to “police” their networks, increase transparency, or operate “neutrally?” What future is there for privacy online? Can online free speech be regulated? Can it really unseat tyrants?

With contributions by Robert D. Atkinson, Stewart Baker, Ann Bartow, Yochai Benkler, Larry Downes, Josh Goldfoot, Eric Goldman, James Grimmelmann, H. Brian Holland, David R. Johnson, Andrew Keen, Hon. Alex Kozinski, Mark MacCarthy, Geoffrey Manne, Evgeny Morozov, Milton Mueller, John Palfrey, Frank Pasquale, Berin Szoka, Paul Szynol, Adam Thierer, Hal Varian, Christopher Wolf, Tim Wu, Michael Zimmer, Jonathan Zittrain, Ethan Zuckerman.

Publisher TechFreedom, Washington DC, 2010
ISBN 1435767861, 9781435767867
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported License
575 pages

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David Parry (ed.): Ubiquitous Surveillance (2011-)

“In 1996 when John Perry Barlow wrote A Cyberspace Independence Declaration, internet pioneers hoped that the online world Bartlow was describing would come to pass. While Barlow’s rhetoric was admittedly ‘grandiose,’ his central claim, that the internet was a place of freedom separate from the limits of the physical world, reflected the utopic atmosphere of the time. The technological revolution, in particular the rise of the digital network, seemed to point to a future ‘where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity’ (Barlow, 1996). While not everyone in the late 90s could be characterized as a cyberutopian, the dominant mood harbored a sense that the digital network would bring with it newfound, unregulatable freedoms.” (from Introduction)

Publisher Open Humanities Press
Living Books About Life series

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