The impact of Google

There’s a story in today’s Guardian claiming that a mysterious and reclusive British financier has bought the most expensive apartment ever sold in New York — he’s paying $45 million in cash for a 12,000 square feet, 76th floor flat overlooking Central Park. The building in which this pad is located is still being built, but that’s not the interesting bit. The identity of the buyer is shrouded in mystery. “He’s not a celebrity”, said the Real Estate agent who’s acting for him. “You wouldn’t even find him if you did a Google search”.

Interesting, that, isn’t it. Google is regarded as so powerful and ubiquitous that the new measure of obscurity is that you cannot be found by it. But that’s not the end of the search engine’s quiet penetration. For example, someone came to see me last week about a project I’m working on. After the initial pleasantries he said: “OK. I’ve been to the web site and done a Google search, so we can start from there”. Which I guess would have dismayed some people, but in this context was terrific. It meant that we could get quickly to the heart of what we wanted to discuss.

The other implication of Google+the Web is that one of the tenets of old-style print journalism — the assumption that the writer has privileged information which the reader does not possess — has to be abandoned. It was always unwise for journalists to patronise their readers; but now, it’s absolutely fatal. Better to assume that they know more than you. Apart from anything else, this does wonders for the quality of your work — you have to wise up, not dumb down.

There’s also a constitutional issue about balance of powers. If Google is now so powerful, who’s going to make sure it doesn’t abuse its power? Remember Lord Acton: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. That’s one reason Google Watch is important.

Comment from Ian Winship: “The impact of Google’ should be complemented by the ‘myths of Google’ – ie, that all information is on the Web (but it isn’t); that the Web is free (but lots of professional information is subscription only); that Google can find everything on the Web (not the subscription stuff, not the invisible web, not the open Web that it doesn’t index); that there are no other search engines (there are lots and their coverage overlaps with Google, they have other features), etc.

As well as Googlewatch to monitor Google there’s Gary Price’s Resourceshelf (www.resourceshelf.com) which often picks up and comments critically on articles about Google.”

Hacking for free speech

Interesting piece by Chris Sprigman about Hacktivismo, which has developed tools for poking holes in censorship firewalls.

The star system in academia — and its consequences

You thought the transfer market for top footballers was outrageous? Well, think again. It’s even more cut-throat in US academia. Fascinating, detailed account of the mayhem caused when too much private money goes chasing too few academic stars. Thanks to Arts and Letters Daily.

A Beginner’s Guide to Textbook Writing

Lovely, cynical piece by Garrett Bauman (whose textbook is now into its fifth edition).

Internet telephony threatens corrupt and incompetent African telcos

In many parts of Africa, it’s difficult to get a dialtone. And even in places where there are phone connections, you have to wait for years or bribe someone simply to get a phone installed. But guess what? If you have an internet line, the you can have much more reliable phone service — by using the Net. Needless to say, the telcos don’t like this. Interesting piece on this by a NYT reporter.

The morality of P2P networking

Interesting debate between Ian Clarke, Freenet’s inventor, and Matt Oppenheim, RIAA’s senior vice president of business and legal affairs.

Ed Felten’s Great Idea: why not create librarian-friendly censorware?

Ed writes:

A Modest Proposal

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can condition Federal funding for libraries on the libraries’ use of censorware (i.e., that a law called CIPA is consistent with the constitution), it’s time to take a serious look at the deficiencies of censorware, and what can be done about them.

Suppose you’re a librarian who wants to comply with CIPA, but otherwise you want your patrons to have access to as much material on the Net as possible. From your standpoint, the popular censorware products have four problems. (1) They block some unobjectionable material. (2) They fail to block some material that is obscene or harmful to minors. (3) They try to block material that Congress does not require to be blocked, such as certain political speech. (4) They don’t let you find out what they block.

(1) and (2) are just facts of life — no technology can eliminate these problems. But (3) and (4) are solvable — it’s possible to build a censorware program that doesn’t try to block anything except as required by the law, and it’s possible for a program’s vendor to reveal what their product blocks. But of course it’s unlikely that the main censorware vendors will give you (3) or (4).

So why doesn’t somebody create an open-source censoreware program that is minimally compliant with CIPA? This would give librarians a better option, and it would put pressure on the existing vendors to narrow their blocking lists and to say what they block.

I can understand why people would have been hesitant to create such a program in the past. Most people who want to minimize the intrusiveness of censorware have thus far done so by not using censorware; so there hasn’t been much of a market for a narrowly tailored product. But that may change as librarians are forced to use censorware.

Also, censorware opponents have found the lameness and overbreadth of existing censorware useful, especially in court. But now, in libraries at least, that usefulness is mostly past, and it’s time to figure out how to cope with CIPA in the least harmful way. More librarian-friendly censorware seems like a good start.

Understanding Linus

There’s a very good interview with Linus Torvalds which reveals more of the person behind Linux than the usual business-mag stuff. Also his views on the Linux development model, convertibles and the SCO lawsuit. Thanks to Roger Warner for the link.

Blogging comes to Westminster?

Dave Winer & Co are gearing up to make sure that Blogging plays a full role in the next US Presidential election, by providing discussion and reporting channels which are not controlled by media or political gatekeepers. They call it “Citizen Blogging”. As I reported last December, two prominent Dutch politicians have Blogs. The Discussion Group VoxPolitics is now trying to encourage British MPs to Blog by running a seminar on the subject “Can Weblogs Change Politics?” on July 14 at 17.30 in Portcullis House (opposite Big Ben). Details from here.

The unravelling of Tony Blair

One of the things my American friends don’t understand is why the subterfuge over Iraqi WMD is so damaging to Tony Blair. The best articulation of this comes from a lovely essay by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books. Central passage reads:

“The key issue for Blair seems to be his own sincerity. He is desperate to convince us that he believes in the rightness of his actions. This has been a faultline in his personality from the very beginning. It’s instructive, in this context, to consider the ways in which he differs from Thatcher. Her psychological and political make-up was based on the proposition ‘I am right.’ She relished disagreement and opposition, and the feeling that she was saying things that people did not want to hear but secretly knew were true. When she slipped into madness, or if not madness then something close to it, she did so with the wattage of her blazing-eyed rectitude higher than ever. But Thatcher never claimed to be Good, just Right. Blair’s political personality has always been predicated on the proposition ‘I am good.’ His dewy-eyed, slightly fumbling sincerity – his brilliantly articulate impersonation of earnest inarticulacy – has all along been tied to this self-projection as a Good Man. He is careful about not touting his religion in public, but he doesn’t need to, since the conviction of his own goodness is imprinted in everything he says and does. It is one of the things he has in common with the party he leads, and one of the reasons people are wrong when they say that Blair is a natural Tory. Thatcher’s sense of being right fits into the Tory Party’s self-image as the home of unpopular and uncomfortable truths. Blair’s sense of being good fits the Labour self-image as the party of virtue: the party we would all vote for if we were less selfish and greedy.

Blair seems to want this sense of himself to override all the boring factual details about things like why we went to war, the legal basis of war, whether Saddam had WMD, whether he in point of fact posed any risk to the UK, whether MI6 are incompetent or merely ill-used or both; Blair just wants us to take his word for all of it. Inside the Downing Street Wolfsschanze, all this is seen as an issue for the ‘chattering classes’ – a phrase as beloved of New Labour as it was of the Tories and one which would have caused Goebbels a snicker of professional respect. This world-view means that the Government doesn’t have to listen to a word said by its critics since all our arguments come pre- dismissed. It is exactly analogous to the point Thatcher got to when her sense of her own rightness began to override her sense of external reality. It may be too simple to say, as Clare Short said, quoting an unnamed Tory, that ‘no one ever leaves Downing Street entirely sane.’ But there is a moment in most premierships when it is clear that the external world no longer counts quite as much in the Prime Minister’s deliberations as it once did; a point where we no longer believe them, and they no longer much care what we think.”

This is a thoughtful piece, well worth reading in full.