the don’t ask Who wants to know something, Google. And then? Beyond the boundaries of the Internet knowledge and the shock that it does not trigger if the search engine spits out Information.
Adrian’s Praise
Every day, Google registers of 3.5 billion searches. Among the most common questions in Germany to 2018 Trends “Where the moon is, according to Google?”, “How often, France was the world champion?” and “How is the mother of Niki Lauda’s name?”. This is not added to the high knowledge of art, but nevertheless, Google is growing by the sheer mass of requests, the role of the Debate to an arbitrator. Wherever in discussions doubts as to the facts, consulted the search engine. Google is now something like an official Central register of the certified Knowledge algorithmically. But what if Google has no information?
The author Linda Besner has recently described in an Essay for the online magazine Real Life, as she came on the road to the slightly daring thought, if her grandmother underwent ever surgery of the nose. “I thought: I googele it when I get home. A nano second later, I felt a Flicker of fear.” Of course, Google has no information about the plastic SURGERY of her grandmother. But the thought of Google was in the Moment so intuitive, a Reflex, as one would grasp blindly for an object in the kitchen, which is always in the same place.
writes The experience to be at the boundaries of Internet knowledge, had been a “physical shock”, Besner. The author had to struggle with conflicting feelings: “I have found that, although the Internet has many facts about me, it at all don’t know who I really am.”
In the Australian Comedy series “Please Like Me”, from the Besners thought experiment was inspired, says the main cast members Josh to his therapist: “I googled ,Why kill my mother?’, however, it is only said to me, why other mothers have committed suicide. And always, if I go to the Internet, tried Google Ads to sell me a new mother.” The grotesque joke alludes to the fact that the Knowledge of the Google always speaks, is not encyclopedic, but the primary rule is to know about the consumer.
can not get more different than “fast times.”
For the feeling that the all-knowing Internet revealed blind spots, chose Besner the bulky term “Ungoogleability”, which in German means as much as Ungooglebarkeit and a little meta sounds physically, almost like infinity or non-existence. The Terminus technicus has quite a controversial history: In December 2012, the Swedish Sprachrat not want to include the neologism “ogooglebar” (“googlebar”) is officially in the vocabulary. Each year, the language the guardian to publish ten new words in the Swedish language use. The panel defined the term as “something that can not be in the network with a search engine found”. Google was displeased with this Definition, however. The group called on the panel to substantiate the General statement and to point to Google. It should also be added to a note, that Google is a registered trademark.
in Order to prevent a legal dispute in the name dispute, in the case of the Sprachrat small and removed the word from its list. On its website, the Academy announced that the term will still be in the Swedish vocabulary, because “language development to brand protection, give a damn”. That was a strong Argument, but it shows that the linguistic capitalism also claims the definition of sovereignty.
in 2006, sent Google-lawyers letters to numerous media houses, including the Washington Post, with the request that the editors not like to use the term “googling”, but the correct way to write “perform a Google search”, because otherwise, the trademark rights would be violated. In June 2006, the Verb “to Google” was then input in the Oxford English Dictionary in uppercase to reflect the brand statement, what values, as a large concession. Also, the Duden, who took the Verb “googling” in 2004, had to change at the Insistence of the group on the relevant entry.
self-perception runs only within the algorithmic corridor
The argument revolves in a circle: Google encourages trademark protection for a term contributes to its brand of education use only. It is not just the legal question of whether “Google” is a generic term, such as Heroin or speed and by trade mark protection (a court in the United States has denied to this question), but about the fact that a group of terms with a search earns money, a verb of prohibition to pronounce and editorial rules of the language imposed.
The case is a little reminiscent of George Orwell’s novel “1984”, in Syme, who works in the “Ministry of truth” to the revised edition of the dictionary of Newspeak, on the lunch table in the canteen, declaims: “It is a glorious thing, this Culling of words. (…) Finally, we’ll have thought crime literally impossible, because there are no more words, in which you could Express them.”
“use Google” is now synonymous with “search”, not only refers to the voice power of the search engine giant, but also an unprecedented privatisation of knowledge. The group has sort of set a mental mark right to use the information in the network. The Talk about Google, as if the illumination of people and their Innermost is the most Normal thing in the world, an activity such as cooking or sleeping, trivialised and normalised to a monitoring practice, on the other, it cemented the authority of the group, to control our thoughts. It has not nationalized the algorithmic search technology is now so internal that you can’t not do, as “to Google quickly”.
The American philosopher Michael Patrick Lynch writes in his book, “The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data”, that googling was something like faith. The Knowledge is merely receptive and not reflective, you would download information. The Ungooglebarkeit is in this logic, a systemic Error, a Bug in the big machine called society, in the philosophical: a nihilistic Void.
Actually, you should mean that Google is the ultimate Form of data protection and autonomy, because the digital subject can not be used by any web crawlers and indexed are identified. But it is just the opposite, that Google is a functional prerequisite for the existence of the information. Just what is the googlebar. The prerequisite, in turn, is directly linked to the digital existence, because self-perception is ultimately only within the algorithmic corridor.
Google is to argue with McLuhan, a medial extension of the body, a disposal of the inner, where each space refers to a function defect. The search engine has conditioned the users so that knowledge gaps in the brain prosthesis will be perceived as phantom pain as a sort of virtual amnesia, a disruption of the collective memory, which can only be achieved by intervention in the program code to heal. Perhaps the neurotic Algorithms, the scent in each time you enter an anomaly, even for some of the cognitive short circuit, the the Community as such is not recognized. The not Google is become the pathology of the digital society. A phenomenon, to know the Google also no advice.