The Hyperlinked Society :: Google, Links, and Popularity versus Authority
"The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age", just published, contains a chapter by me on "Google, Links, and Popularity versus Authority"
The entire book is on-line, and linkable, so you can read and link to it.
It's a good chapter, if I do say so myself, exploring the way search algorithms can embody various social values. And it's written in a style that liberal arts type should be able to handle, yet geeks should find tolerable (that is, the amount of information is high, the humanities jargon non-existent, and I endeavour to be clear and logical rather than obscure and verbose). I'm particularly proud of the part where I managed to weave in a several decades old news judgement description as an algorithmic determination.
The chapter is probably the best example of what I was considering writing a few years ago, when I had thoughts about what I described as doing Lawrence Lessig's "Code And Other Laws Of Cyberspace" from a technical perspective. But this is probably going to be my last "academic" writing. It's been evident for a while now that I have no future in that area. And creating this sort of material is not a very fulfilling hobby.
Anyway, read the chapter, read the book.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in google | on July 29, 2008 06:05 PM (Infothought permalink)
