<nettime-ann> Society of the Query: INC Conference on Culture & Politics of Search (Amsterdam, Nov 13-14)

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

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Society of the Query conference: 13 - 14 November 2009
Location: Trouw Amsterdam
Organized by the Institute of Network Cultures

More info and material on: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/query/

In the information society the current reality is an increasing  
dependence on technological resources to create order and to find  
meaning in a gigantic quantity of online data. Searching has surpassed  
browsing and surfing as main activity on the web. This development  
turned the search engine into our most significant point of reference.  
Its focus on efficiency and expansion of services tends to veil the  
nature of the technology as well as underlying (corporate) ideologies.

In this query driven society, The Society of the Query conference  
seeks to analyze what impact our reliance on resources to manage  
knowledge on the Internet has on our culture. The theory of a semantic  
web lurking around the corner revives the ‘human vs. artificial  
intelligence’-debate. The centralizing web demands to critically  
question the distribution of power, the diversity and accessibility of  
web content, while promising alternatives for the dominant paradigm  
surface in peer-to-peer and open source initiatives. Finally, the  
question arises what role politics and education, after having  
invested substantially in media intelligence, can play in the creation  
of an informed users’ group.

For two days, the Society of the Query conference aims to zoom in on  
some of the essential themes surrounding web search by critical  
analysis and the contextualization of developments in interface design  
and the organization of knowledge. The Institute of Network Cultures  
seeks to achieve this specifically by uniting researchers, theorists,  
activists, artists and professionals working in this area and by  
creating a platform for not only realized projects and recent  
research, but also for open questions and predictions.

Conference Themes

Society of the Query
Digital Civil Rights and Media Literacy
Alternative Search (1)
Art and the Engine
Googlization of Everyday Life
Alternative Search (2)

Society of the Query
Because the web lacks editorial monitoring, we have become more  
dependent on technological resources when trying to find meaningful  
content within the vast amount of data on the web. Traditional methods  
to decide what information is valuable and useful are absent. In  
recent years, people have become increasingly dissatisfied by Google’s  
PageRank-algorithm, which is based of the popularity of a web page.  
Also, new semantic layers have been added to the principal  
architecture of the web. This conference session will focus on  
‘searching’ on the level of the software and will discuss the notion  
of the organization of knowledge within the theoretical framework of  
the humanities and computer science.

Questions to be discussed in this session include: What is the history  
of the organization of knowledge? Which ideologies make up the  
foundations for  the concept  of ‘ontology’? And, what role will human  
expertise play in the era of ‘machine understanding’?

Moderator: Geert Lovink
Speakers:

   * Yann Moulier Boutang (F), editor of Multitude’s special issue on  
Google (May 2009).
   * Matteo Pasquinelli (NL), Author of Animal Spirits (2008) and  
Google’s PageRank: Diagram of the Cognitive Capitalism and Rentier of  
the Common Intellect” (2009).
   * Teresa Numerico (IT), (PhD in History of Science) is a  
researcher in Philosophy of Science at the University of Salerno,  
where she teaches New Media.
   * David Gugerli (CH), author of “Suchmaschinen – Die Welt als  
Datenbank” (2009).

Digital Civil Rights and Media Literacy
In 2005, John Batelle characterized Google as a ‘database of intents’:  
a valuable archive of individual and collective wishes. As the number  
of services offered by search engines is expanding, large amounts of  
personal information are gathered, stored and used for commercial  
purposes. The current technological climate seems to be one in which  
the user is virtually unaware of who or what is behind the web  
applications they use on a daily basis.

Questions to be discussed in this session include: How does the  
intermediary function of search engines threaten digital civil rights  
such as the right to privacy and freedom of expression? What role can  
politics play in protecting these rights? How can the way search  
engines are designed aid to protecting our autonomy? How will the  
legal framework concerning search engines be shaped? And, after  
substantial investments in media intelligence, how are these matters  
raised on a national and European level?

Moderator: Caroline Nevejan
Speakers:

   * Nart Villeneuve (CA), Open Net Initiative.
   * Joris van Hoboken (NL), doctoral candidate at the Institute for  
Information Law at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses  
on digital civil rights and the legal framework concerning search  
engines.
   * Ippolita Collective (IT), Italian collective that recently  
published “Luci e Ombre di Google” (2007), available in English as  
“The Dark Side of Google”.

Alternative Search (1)
In response to a growing interest in alternative methods to search the  
web, this session will focus on three ‘genres’ of alternatives on the  
level of the user, the software and the network – represented and  
compared by researchers. The first genre that is attended to will  
include the upcoming ‘general purpose’-search engine, a search engine  
designed specifically with large audiences and competition with Google  
in mind. The second genre will focus on search methods that disregard  
the ‘engine’ as dominant paradigm. How promising are, for example,  
peer- to-peer and open source technologies with regards to the current  
search conditions and which alternatives for commercial and  
centralizing methods have already emerged? The third and final genre  
consists of specialized search engines, mostly targeting specific  
content. What can we learn, for instance, from search methods within  
certain web spheres, such as the blogosphere, or the flourishing area  
of mobile search? And, how is the field of visual search developing,  
looking beyond the tag as systematizing principle?

Moderator: Eric Sieverts
Speakers:

   * Matthew Fuller (UK), Goldsmiths College, will discuss  
alternative search engines and interventions within the field of  
artists.
   * Cees Snoek/Marcel Worring (NL), University of Amsterdam, focuses  
on visual search engines, competitions between universities in the US  
and Amsterdam, assignment for the search engine: find the red hat in  
the movie as fast as possible.
   * Ingmar Weber (NL/FR), post doctorate researcher in information  
retrieval at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in  
Switzerland. His doctoral research focused on efficient data  
structures and applications for an interactive search engine called  
‘CompleteSearch’.

Art and the Engine
Even during the web’s early stages, artists used this platform to  
produce and distribute a extensive diversity of media such as  
animation, programming, video, audio and games.  While in the last  
decennium we have witnessed a shift from the ‘directory’ towards the  
algorithm, it is the art database that has been refining the directory  
model for years.

What influence does Google’s omnipresence have over the production and  
distribution of web based art? How does art criticism manifest itself  
in the era of Google? And, how the can online artistic experience be  
preserved and made easily findable? While examining these issues, the  
Institute of Network Cultures will invite representatives of some of  
the largest art databases, such as the Rhizome ArtBase and the Whitney  
ArtPort, to discuss the latest developments in the classification,  
annotation and visualization of web based art.

Concentrating on the latest developments within the field of graphic  
design, art and the architecture of information, additionally this  
session will address potential outcomes of search result design.

Questions to be discussed in this session include: How can we achieve  
more advanced forms of interface design and search result design? What  
role do graphic and visual representations play in the conveyance of  
digital information? Do alternatives exist that can challenge the  
‘ranked list’ as dominant type of search result presentation? And, how  
would the interface be able to stimulate new and progressive ways for  
the user to search, find and analyze data?

Moderator: Sabine Niederer
Speakers:

   * Lev Manovich (USA), UCSD professor, media theorist and initiator  
of Software Studies.
   * Daniel van der Velden (NL), Metahaven Design Research is a  
design and research agency in Amsterdam, that researches the potential  
power of ‘bridging nodes’, the peripheral nodes in a network, and is  
implementing this theory into a prototype for a new kind of search  
engine.
   * Christopher Bruno (FR), artist. Produces polymorphic art  
inspired by network phenomena and globalization regarding image and  
language.
   * Allessandro Ludovico (IT), thoughts on the aftermath of the  
Google Will Eat Itself project.

Googlization of Everyday Life
Questions to be discussed in this session include: In what way does  
the hegemony of some of the bigger search engines influence the flow  
of information and the diversity and accessibility of web content? How  
does the current division of power influence the administration of  
informational sources. And, what are the results of the Google  
BookSearch agreement?

Introduction and moderation by Andrew Keen
Speakers:

   * Siva Vaidhyanathan (US), culture historian and Associate  
Professor in Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia.  
Authored publications include “The Anarchist in the Library” (2004)  
and the forthcoming “The Googlization of Everything” (early 2010).
   * Stefan Weber (Vienna) on the dangers of plagiarism and Google’s  
role in the decline of education.
   * Benjamin Edelman (US), How Google and Its Partners Inflate  
Measured Conversion Rates and Increase Advertisers’ Costs.

Flarf Performance

Alternative Search (2)
In response to a growing interest in alternative methods to search the  
web, this session will focus on three ‘genres’ of alternatives on the  
level of the user, the software and the network – represented and  
compared by researchers. The first genre that is attended to will  
include the upcoming ‘general purpose’-search engine, a search engine  
designed specifically with large audiences and competition with Google  
in mind. The second genre will focus on search methods that disregard  
the ‘engine’ as dominant paradigm. How promising are, for example,  
peer- to-peer and open source technologies with regards to the current  
search conditions and which alternatives for commercial and  
centralizing methods have already emerged? The third and final genre  
consists of specialized search engines, mostly targeting specific  
content. What can we learn, for instance, from search methods within  
certain web spheres, such as the blogosphere, or the flourishing area  
of mobile search? And, how is the field of visual search developing,  
looking beyond the tag as systematizing principle?

Moderator: Richard Rogers
Speakers:

   * Florian Cramer (Rotterdam), head of the Master of Arts in Media  
Design program at the Piet Zwart Institute/ Willem de Kooning Academy  
in Rotterdam. Authored publications include the essay “Animals that  
Belong to the Emperor: Failing Universal Classification Schemes from  
Aristotle to the Semantic Web” (2007).
   * Europeana Thought Lab (The Hague), Semantic Search Engine for  
Europeana
   * Stephen Pemberton (Amsterdam), chairman of the XHTML2 Working  
Group at W3C and researcher at the Center for Mathematics and Computer  
Science in Amsterdam.

Project Showcase

This segment of the conference will consist of the exhibition of  
specific projects addressing the theme of the search engine, and will  
be divided into two parts. During the conference, a display of  
computers and screens will be available on which the latest generation  
of search engines is installed. The Institute of Network Cultures  
seeks to give visitors the opportunity to discover search engines such  
as Wolfram Alpha, Quaero, Theseus and Autonomy. This will provide them  
with hands-on experience of the range of search methods discussed in  
the conference sessions. Furthermore, the Institute of Network  
Cultures plans to organize a concluding evening program to do justice  
to the diversity of artistic and activist projects that examine the  
role of the search engine in contemporary society. The works presented  
in the evening program will vary from browser extensions, alternative  
search engines and net art projects to videos and VJ performances. It  
is aspired that artists and developers will be present during this  
showcase to discuss and elaborate on their work with the audience.

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