Alexander Halavais: Search Engine Society (2008–)

“Search engines have become a key part of our everyday lives. Yet while much has been written about how to use search engines and how they can be improved, there has been comparatively little exploration of what the social and cultural effects might be. Like all technologies, search engines exist within a larger political, cultural, and economic environment. This volume aims to redress this balance and to address crucial questions such as:

* How have search engines changed the way we organize our thoughts about the world, and how we work?
* What are the ‘search engine wars’, what do they portend for the future of search, and who wins or loses?
* To what extent does political control of search engines, or the political influence of search engines, affect how they are used, misused, and regulated?
* Does the search engine help shape our identities and interactions with others, and what implications does this have for privacy?

Informed members of the information society must understand the social contexts in which search engines have been developed, what that development says about us as a society, and the role of the search engine in the global information environment. This book provides the perfect starting point.”

Publisher Polity, 2008
Digital Media and Society series
ISBN 0745642152, 9780745642154
196 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-12-5)
EPUB (2nd ed., 2017, added on 2019-12-5)

Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines (2007-2012)

Google’s manual for its unseen humans who rate the web. The raters are being hired through Google’s contractors such as Lionbridge, Leapforce and Appen Butler Hill.

Publisher Google, Inc.
43 pages; 125 pages; 161 pages
via Google Search

interview with a Google Search quality rater (searchengineland.com)
discussion (Slashdot)
commentary (v.3.27, searchengineland.com)
commentary (v.3.18, searchenginewatch.com)
commentary (v.2.1, searchengineland.com)

PDF (Version 3.27, June 2012)
PDF (Version 3.18, March 2011)
PDF (Version 2.1, April 2007)

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

View online (wiki/PDF/HTML articles)
View online (map interface to the articles)
PDF (PDF’d Introduction with hyperlinked articles)