Joris van Hoboken

Reuters reports about a letter of Google to a U.S. lawmaker, signed Alan Davidson, stating that: “Google supports the adoption of a comprehensive federal privacy law that would accomplish several goals such as building consumer trust and protections; creating a uniform framework for privacy, which would create consistent levels of privacy from one jurisdiction to another; and putting penalties in place to punish and dissuade bad actors.”

Marc Rotetenberg of EPIC, explains that a federal privacy law could end up lowering privacy protection, since states like New York and California have privacy laws in place, which could be pre-empted by a federal law. In fact, Californian data privacy law would oblige Google to put a “privacy policy” link on its homepage, something it still refuses to do. The EU’s Article 29 Working Party recently concluded that (with regard to the EU data protection directive) there is still some work to do for search engines with regard to their privacy policies. Not only do they have to be more esily accessible, they also have to include a user’s rights of access (absolute) or deletion (not absolute) included in Articles 12, 13 and 14 of the Data Protection Directive.

Nick Carr, American journalist and the author of the Big Switch has written an interesting and thoughtful piece about Google’s effect on society. He addresses the question whether or not services like Google will end up making us smarter or stupid. Of course the answer will be a combination of both. By adopting technology we loose something and gain something, with the trade-offs unevenly distributed across society. It is important we study these trade-offs involved in the massive use of an increasingly monopolostic search engine. Therefore, unlike Battelle, I think Carr’s contribution is very valuable. And definitely worth a read.

UPDATE (from comments section & Infothought):

Theo Rohle reacts: “I agree, the article was more interesting than what Battelle made of it (strange outbreak there). Especially the part about the economic aspects of the development towards faster and more intense interaction were worth the read. But I’m not really buying this whole “pancake people” thing. Sure, the internet may be faster and more dynamic than most older media (apart from TV zapping maybe), but I have a hard time believing in this kind of cultural logic being hard-wired into technology. (Quoting McLuhan and Kittler doesn’t really help here, it rather reproduces their problems.) If it’s actually that difficult for people to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes these days, how come everyone seems to be able to watch whole seasons of TV series in a row on DVD? Maybe immersive media practices take place in other forms today and Carr is just too focused on the gold old book to notice it.”

This argument fits with some recent observations about the Obama speech on race issues in the United States, which was more than half an hour long and supposedly watched in its entirety by millions of people.

Actually, I cannot believe that Carr doesn’t read any literature and scholarly books anymore. He seems too clever for that. Some arguments are just better made in a long text and you exclude too much if you forget to take the time to read them.

The comparison I do find interesting is the comparison of Taylorism in industrial manufacturing to Googlism in knowledge work. In Carr’s words “What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind“.

At Infothought there is some discussion about the techno-science vs. humanities sides in this debate: “When I read articles such as the above, I’m very aware that there is indeed a science/humanities “Two Cultures” divide. And I’m on one side of it (science) while many pundits are on the other (humanities). One basic way to tell the difference is essentially when science types can extend “themselves” through technology, they think “This is cool! Wonderful! Great! More!”, while humanities types angst about “How has the basic nature of our essential souls been corrupted?”. Note this angst-ing effect generally applies only to technology they haven’t grown up with - for example, you don’t see a lot of articles bemoaning how the telephone disembodies us into ghostly vocal presences. Of course, the more intelligent humanities types, like Nick, know this history, and it’s clear especially towards the end of his piece. But they write the angst-filled articles all the same.”

The question is, however, if there is an actual debate going on. Most times, the two sides seem to be addressing different questions. (I know this from experience.)

There is more on this here, here and here.

UPDATE: Carr posted a detailed list of sources on his blog.

See here. Excerpt:

“Mr Wales is especially passionate about Wikia’s web-search project. Its search bar looks like Google’s but has a twist. Whereas Google keeps its algorithms a secret, Wikia has made its own open-source. Mr Wales has no illusions about taking on the search juggernaut that is Google and says that “we would be overjoyed to get 5% of the search market, which would still be worth a fortune in advertising revenues (Google, meanwhile, is moving onto Wikipedia’s turf with a new project called Knol.)

So far Wikia’s search results are embarrassingly poor, as reviewers have noted. And there are more fundamental doubts. Wikipedia succeeded because, in 2001, there was no free online encyclopedia. Today web search, by contrast, is a hyper-competitive industry. Consumers are not clamouring for a new search engine. And revealing the algorithms could make it easier for website designers to manipulate the results. Mr Wales does not see it that way. Search has become a window to knowledge, and Google and its rivals have become its arbiters. “For me it’s a political statement,” he says. “We don’t need secrecy.” Ayn Rand would surely approve.“

The European Court of Justice will decide a number of crucial questions about Google’s Adwords system and Trademark protection. See here.

This is an excellent video of panel on privacy and online advertising, organized by Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School. It is really worth watching.

Wikia opened up its results for editing. It seems they made a lot of progress. The recent changes page is fascinating. I am not sure it will work at all, but it surely provides some transparency, also with regard to the pressures the major engines are subject to. I will try to use it sometimes and delete some spam and add some sources to my regular searches.