Book Review: Google and the Culture of Search

Abstract

Ken Hillis, Michael Petit, and Kylie Jarrett Google and Culture of Search. New York: Routledge, 2013. 240 pp.This book covers wide theoretical and historical terrain within its limited length, offering unique view of Google and what it calls the culture of The authors in Introduction lay out argument that Google is messianic-type leader of what it calls the culture of describes Google as a nexus of power and knowledge newly constituted through extremely rapid changes in social expectations and desires attending them (p. 6). Google has become more than an Internet engine in minds and hearts of its users, according authors:The firm's rise reflects and benefits from generational-inflected growth in perception that everything that matters is now on and that almost everything is already archived in some online database and should, in moral sense of this verb, be accessible through search. (p. 6)Although educators, as well as many over age of thirty, would refute latter claim, authors Hillis, Petit and Jarrett back up their position with reports on statistical rate of use of Google, especially by users under age twenty-nine years (p. 6). In addition, other evidence is given including listing in Oxford English Dictionary that authorizes to google as transitive verb meaning to for information about (a person or thing) (p. 6).In Chapter 3, Universal Libraries and Thinking Machines, authors state . . we offer set of intellectual histories of longstanding, Idealist desire for universal library. We begin with pre-1900 thoughts, desires, theories, and systems of belief that collectively inform contemporary search (p. 77). Here authors discuss intricacies of 1939 essay La Biblioteca (The Total Library) by Jorge Luis Borges, Judeo-Christian story of Tower of Babel, ancient Ptolemaic rulers' desire develop library collection encompassing languages and knowledge from all over world (In 283 BCE at beginning of Ptolemy's II reign library at Alexandria had collected 200,000 scrolls) and ideas of 14th century philosopher Ramon Lull's Thinking Machine. In Chapter 4, authors draw more historical comparisons between contemporary culture and ideas propagated by philosopher H. G. Wells in his work World Brain (1938). Chapter 5 covers post-WWII efforts develop ever-expanding electronic databases that utilize ever-broadening information retrieval and technologies, authors describe with foci on interplay among information, metaphysics and search (p.124).Instructors of journalism, communication, and library and information science may find aforementioned book as whole unwieldy for classroom instruction, but may find chapters 1, 2, 6, and 7 useful for upper-level undergraduate classes or graduate seminars as teaching tool help jump-start thoughtful discussions and provide interesting insights into Google, as well as into the culture of search interpretation.Welcome Googleplex, chapter 1, outlines entity of Google. Much of book revolves around Google trademark technology PageRank, which underpins Google's technologies [and] transformed practice and conceptualizations of what it was Web (p. 3), but Google is more than algorithm. The authors ask, What is Google? Their answer is, It is technology firm, media corporation, an automated ad agency, platform, financier of automated vehicles and alternative energy projects (p. 30).Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were early web adopters and emerged after studying as students at Stanford University. The company has been able keep some of its do-it-yourself California ideology alongside commercialism and forprofit motivation. The following conclusion is drawn:Google's revenue stream relies on an established economic model shared by broadcast mass media-the audience is commodity sold advertisers (Smyth 1981). …