Google, in its mission, famously aspires to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But a mission is a mission, not a modus operandi. Examining what Google does, rather than what it aims to do, reveals the surprisingly conservative role it actually plays in the world. […]
petey
59 posts
In my last post I wrote about links and objects. Specifically, I argued that, while traditional censorship (both analog and digital) had focused on the object to be censored (a book, a painting, a website), some emergent tactics of online censorship instead function by erasing or making uninteresting paths which […]
Imagine an expressive object. A book, a painting, or a website will do. This object, in literary terms, constitutes a text, with a meaning to be interpreted by readers. Assume that a given audience would like to read this text (that is, the text is not already subject to some […]
It is a melancholy object to those in our society when they see the streets flooded, with townspeople refusing to evacuate ahead of a terrible hurricane and thus recklessly risking death. I think it is agreed by all parties that such prodigious suffering is unnecessary and avoidable, and that whoever […]
What is a textbook? Where does it come from? How does it work? For a long time these questions would have been easy to answer. A textbook contains information about an academic subject, such as “An Introduction to Economics.” Textbooks are written by professors at the behest of companies which […]