Matthew Fuller: Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (2003)
Filed under book | Tags: · free software, interface, internet, search, software, software art, software studies
A far-reaching and strikingly original collection of essays on the “culture of software” by new-media critic Matthew Fuller. Behind the Blip looks at the many ways in which the ostensibly neutral userinterfaces, search engines, “intelligent agents,” and word processorsthat are now part of our everyday life are actively reshaping the waywe look at and interact with the world.
Publisher Autonomedia, 2003
Anti-copyright for non-commercial publication
ISBN 1570271399, 9781570271397
165 pages
PDF (updated on 2017-3-14)
Comment (0)Bernard Girard: The Google Way: How One Company Is Revolutionizing Management as We Know It (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · business, google, management, search
Shortly after World War I, Ford and GM created the large modern corporation, with its financial and statistical controls, mass production, and assembly lines. In the 1980s, Toyota stood out for combining quality with continuous refinement. Today, Google is reinventing business yet again—the way we work, how organizations are controlled, and how employees are managed.
Management consultant Bernard Girard has been analyzing Google since its founding in 1998, and now in The Google Way, he explores Google’s innovations in depth—many of which are far removed from the best practices taught at the top business schools.
As you read, you’ll see how much of Google’s success is due to its focus on users and automation. You’ll also learn how eCommerce has profoundly changed the relationship between businesses and their customers, for the first time giving customers an important role to play in a major corporation’s growth. Finally, Girard speculates about the limits of Google’s business model and discusses the challenges it will face as it continues to grow.
Publisher No Starch Press, 2009
ISBN 1593271840, 9781593271848
Length 247 pages
Jean Noël Jeanneney: Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View From Europe (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · archive, google, internet, library, politics, search
The recent announcement that Google will digitize the holdings of several major libraries sent shock waves through the book industry and academe. Google presented this digital repository as a first step towards a long-dreamed-of universal library, but skeptics were quick to raise a number of concerns about the potential for copyright infringement and unanticipated effects on the business of research and publishing.
Jean-Noël Jeanneney, president of France’s Bibliothèque Nationale, here takes aim at what he sees as a far more troubling aspect of Google’s Library Project: its potential to misrepresent—and even damage—the world’s cultural heritage. In this impassioned work, Jeanneney argues that Google’s unsystematic digitization of books from a few partner libraries and its reliance on works written mostly in English constitute acts of selection that can only extend the dominance of American culture abroad. This danger is made evident by a Google book search the author discusses here—one run on Hugo, Cervantes, Dante, and Goethe that resulted in just one non-English edition, and a German translation of Hugo at that. An archive that can so easily slight the masters of European literature—and whose development is driven by commercial interests—cannot provide the foundation for a universal library.
As a leading librarian, Jeanneney remains enthusiastic about the archival potential of the Web. But he argues that the short-term thinking characterized by Google’s digital repository must be countered by long-term planning on the part of cultural and governmental institutions worldwide—a serious effort to create a truly comprehensive library, one based on the politics of inclusion and multiculturalism.
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2007
ISBN 0226395774, 9780226395777
Length 92 pages