goodtosee #9: Scroogle

Posted on 19 September 2011 by astrid

I briefly talked about Scroogle in a previous blogpost, but it deserves its own post since it’s such a great tool! Scroogle was developed by Daniel Brandt and basically figures as a proxy for Google search.

That’s how it works according to their website:

Scroogle randomly grabs a Goo IP. Google issues a new cookie with a new ID, and sends the search results. We trash the cookie and save the results in a file that is deleted within the hour. Google records Scroogle’s IP address, the search terms, and the date and time. We parse the file and send the results to the searcher. We don’t use cookies, we don’t save the search terms, and logs are deleted within 48 hours.

Using Google through Scroogle hence protects users’ privacy because it disables the logging and archiving of cookies and IP addresses, which capture users’ search activities. It allows users to enjoy the full search service without feeding user data into the search engine. Contrary to reconfiguring browsers, deleting cookies and other strategies of “digital self-defense”, which often trigger inconveniences, Scroogle maintains the full service (except from Google’s annoying ads). Accordingly, Scroogle may be seen as exploiting Google. In my perception this is only fair since Google exploits us too by using our web content, linking strategies and, most importantly, our data to create profit. The so-called “user profiling”, the creation of “profiles” out of users’ search terms, search history and locations, is the basis for user-targeted advertising that made Google one of the most profitable companies on earth.*

Scroogle thus enables users to opt out of this economic exploitation scheme, while still providing the benefits of Google search. A clever move! Besides, Scroogle is entertaining too. Its homepage shows a new comic each time you reload the page. Most of the comics make fun of Google, and some of them are truly hilarious:

But check it out yourself, it’s worth risking a look! Another great tool is the Firefox Add-on „TrackMeNot“, which messes up user profiles by sending random search queries to the search engine.

* For an academic discussion on Google’s exploitation scheme within the broader context of capitalist society see, for example:

Fuchs, Christian (forthcoming) A Contribution to the Critique of the Political Economy of Google, Fast Capitalism, vol. 8, no. 1.

Mager, Astrid (2011) Algorithmic Ideology. How Society Shapes Search Engines, Conference paper for the OII conference “A Decade in Internet Time” (Oxford, 21-24 September).

Pasquinelli, Matteo (2009) Google’s PageRank. Diagram of the Cognitive Capitalism and Rentier of the Common Intellect, in Deep Search: The Politics of Search Engines beyond Google, eds. K. Becker & F. Stalder, Studienverlag, Innsbruck, pp. 152-162.

swedish wood

Posted on 10 September 2011 by astrid

Going into the wood shows that academics are not the only ones working hard. It also impressively demonstrates that life is truly gorgeous outside the office. And yes, the title is a reference to the beautiful Beatles song Norwegian Wood.

Even construction sites have their own charm. Sometimes.

goodtosee #8: academic role model

Posted on 21 August 2011 by astrid

I’ve been thinking about my job lately. And my life. Or how to bring the two together more specifically. The “work-life balance”, as they call it nowadays. Looking around me I see young academics struggling to get their papers out, to find jobs, or to acquire research money. They work hard to make all that happen. The underlying assumption that keeps them going – that keeps us going – is the harder you work, the more rewarded you’ll get. Lately, however, I started doubting this assumption. In an academic world of scarcity it has become hard to succeed. Budget cuts, closing down of university positions, and a growing dependency on peer-reviewed journal publications and external research grants have created a bottleneck that is harder and harder to pass through. Not every ambitious scholar will make it, no matter how hard s/he works. Does that make me sound like a frustrated scholar? Yes, it does, but I share the frustration with the world. See what I found amongst the first results of the Google image search for “postdoc”:

Image credit: dentcartoons.blogspot.com

However, it also makes me a realistic researcher. And it opens up the chance to act upon that reality. Instead of sacrificing more and more bits of my life to the career, it made me think about life in and of itself. (What might be related to the fact that I’m growing older too, but that’s a whole different story). What is important in life? Why do I get up in the morning? What keeps me going? The job is certainly an important part in my life. I love my job. I love writing, going to conferences and sharing ideas with my fellows. I want to continue doing that. But not at any price. Look at this one, that was the second hit in the image search:

Image credit: scienceblogs.com/

Not if it requires working oneself to death, “writing like a madman”, as a colleague of mine put it once, and living in places I do not necessarily want to be – far away from my boyfriend, friends, and family. That may sound very naive, but it may also sound very healthy. I do think that my job should be organized around my life and not the other way round. Isn’t that interesting that the latter has become the standard practice though? That it has become normal to go wherever a job opens up or a fellowship is offered to you? – even if it’s just for one or two years? Without having the certainty – or even possibilty – to get a permanent position (ever)? That seems more and more insane to me.

That is why I try to focus on life from now on. What does that mean? I have no idea, but it feels great! And I’ll find out along the way, I guess. A good starting point for now is a sentence I’ve recently read on Norman T. White’s website. Below his name he says “celebrating 42 years without a full-time job”. (Further below he says “we fix toasters”).

In any case, I’ve met Norman a couple of weeks ago in Vienna. He is a well-known pioneer in robotics living in Toronto. He creates a lot of cool stuff including a “helpless robot”, a “sumo robot”, a tool for “arm wrestling over distance”, and many other “clearly pointless and useless” objects. I only met him briefly, but I perceived him as a creative thinker and a fun guy to have around. And he seems healthy and happy with life. That’s why I take him – and his anniversary – as a role model or spirit to follow. And everyone is welcome to join!

Amsterdam & Vienna: two cities – two summer schools – some reflections

Posted on 21 July 2011 by astrid

I’ve attended two summer schools in the last three weeks and it was fun. Both the digital methods summer school (Amsterdam) and the Marie Jahoda summer school of sociology (Vienna) were highly inspiring events with great participants! The differences were striking though. And reflected the spirit of two different cities and two different academic cultures.

photo credit left: Marieke van Dijk — right: Monica Titton

The purpose of the digital methods event was to learn how to conduct Internet research by following the medium and its natively digital objects. If you want to investigate search engine results, use and learn from Google and its way of functioning, for example. Employ and build on search query data instead of creating artificial user search experiments was one of the messages. How to investigate and theorized “big data” was thus one central issue debated, in Richard Rogers´talk most importantly. What implications the use – and dependency on – algorithms and commercial tools such as Google or Facebook triggers was another interesting aspect raised by Noortje Marres. Besides theoretical discussions – such as the “salon” on Bruno Latour and David Berry moderated by Mark Tuters – we were motivated to work on actual projects. The main part of the summer school was organized around research investigating issues/ controversies in search engine results, on social networking platforms, Wikileaks and other “web spheres”. Here are some maps we developed on the biofuel controversy in Google results in different European countries:

People were thus gathered around computers and tried to make use and sense of the great variety of methods created by the DMI (digital methods initiative) team, but also the network visualization tool Gephi, that Bernhard Rieder presented, and the text coding software DiscoverText developed by Stu Shulman. Thanks to all of you for the great tools and advice!!!

It might be a coincidence that the highly digital summer school took place in Amsterdam – a city concerned with open government data, participatory architecture and urbanity & technology. But it might also reflect the tight entanglement of urban vibes and academic cultures. In Vienna the cultural heritage is central. The first district with its beautiful architecture preserves the empire of the last century. Accordingly, the Viennese summer school took place in a “festive room” mirroring the old charme and elegancy of the University. Paper and pencil instead of hashtag and wiki. The summer school was organized around lectures and presentations instead of laptops and projects. Even though I only participated three days out of six I saw great talks on markets and organizations in the tradition of German intellectual circles. Sophie Mützel talked about the sociology of markets and Frank Hillebrandt elaborated on culture and economy, for example. Further, I learned a lot about economic sociology in a number of great PhD projects from Austrian and German graduate students. That made me realize how interdiscplinary my own work got over the last years, where I was strolling from sociology, science and technology studies, Internet research to digital humanities. I was thus very happy that I got truly great feed-back on my search engine project and reading tipps from the summer school crowd, and especially Sighard Neckel (e.g. “the new spirit of capitalism” by Boltanski and Chiapello, “global complexity” by Urry or “market devices” by Callon, Millo and Muniesa). I do really hope that our paths will cross again in the future!

If you want to learn more about the Viennese summer school I recommend listening to the Ö1 broadcast “Dimensionen” on 26 July 2011, 19h05 (web radio here). Further, I really hope you get to see the “Erschießt Sie – eine Finanzkrisenoper“, which is a theatrical performance of interview material on brokers & the economic crisis based on the book “Strukturierte Verantwortungslosigkeit. Berichte aus der Bankenwelt” (Claudia Honegger, Sighard Neckel und Chantal Magnin). It is a clever and hilarious piece of work!

(photo credit: Summer School)

summer school season 2011

Posted on 22 June 2011 by astrid

I’m excited about the summer school season that’s starting soon! My first stop will be Amsterdam, where the Digital Methods Summer School is taking place from the 27 June till the 8 July. It will be fun to meet Richard Rogers, the organizer of the summer school, and his team again and share ideas, empirical insights, and “digital tools”. The program looks amazing and there’s going to be a great number of participants from all over the world (see also this blogpost).

My second stop will be Vienna, where I’ll attend the Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology dealing with Economy–Markets–Organizations: The Culture of modern Economy.

That’s an excerpt from the website:

Like all economic processes, markets and organizations are embedded in social structures. Cultural values and political decisions strongly influence economic action, and economic processes follow social norms. The culture of markets transcends the homo oeconomicus. As the new economic sociology has shown, economic action, whether it takes place on markets, in organizations, in networks or as self-management, has to be understood as multi-dimensional and is not bound to an economic rationality existing outside social relations. In this perspective, current processes like the “economization” of social fields become themselves visible as cultural patterns of social organization.

The Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology will be set against this thematic background. We will examine competition, firms, management practices and organizations in the economic field, extending it to the arts, religion, sports, fashion, pop culture or the media – social fields, which themselves are examples of today’s “culture of markets”.

It will be really interesting to go back to the Sociology Department, where I studied more than 10 years ago! I’m sure a lot has changed in the last decade and I’m curious about the current state of the field. There will be 19 participants, mostly from the German-speaking context, and I’m happy to be one of them. The summer school will be an excellent opportunity to present my work on search engines in the context of present-day market capitalism and gain feed-back from Austrian/ German researchers. I’m particularly looking forward to meeting Sighard Neckel, the organizer of the summer school – who kindly invited me to take part in this event – and his collaborators.

goodtosee #6: netpolitics in practice

Posted on 17 June 2011 by astrid

I do really like when netpolitics turns into an actual practice, such as the one I’ve just recently learned about in my firefox browser. It’s called Make Your Mark and encourages people to leave a mark to show “support for a people’s web”.

The project is a collaboration between the non-profit organization Mozilla and Evan Roth, an artist and researcher investigating the intersection between free culture and popular culture. Further, the project is supported by the open net advocate Lawrence Lessig. By making your mark you are indicating that you also believe that (according to their website):

The Web is an integral part of modern life.
It is an educator, a communicator, an entertainer, an inspirer, a collaboration of all our creative efforts.
It sparks movements and enables us to share our ideas, our thoughts, our dreams.

The Web is our creation.
We are all contributors, the ones who use the Web every day.
And all the comments and uploads we make add up to something bigger.
This is why we believe that the Web must remain open and accessible to all.

Mark Up is a celebration of that freedom.
Each person’s mark is an individual expression on a continuous line symbolizing solidarity.
It is a declaration and a chance to show your support for a people’s Web.

So if you identify with that then leave a trace on the web, as I did (maybe an even more creative one 😉 ):

Another really great example of netpolitics in practice is the Firefox add-on: Track me Not. This application was created by Daniel C. Howe, Helen Nissenbaum and Janoss and helps you to protect yourself from surveillance and data-profiling by search engines. It does so by irritating search engines such as Google by creating noise and obfuscation.

Practically, this means that the app sends random search queries to search engines such as “Muddy River uses” – the one that’s displayed in my own browser right now. You see, it’s not only useful, it may also be highly entertaining given the stupid queries it sends 😉 More info and download here. Because using the web and getting exploited by big Internet companies must not necessarily be the same, even though it is often case unfortunately..

nasty peer-reviews or “never enough”

Posted on 28 May 2011 by astrid

If you’re an academic you most probably know these nasty peer-reviews rejecting your hard work. These reviews written by your „peers“, who are supposed to make a responsible decision, but use their powerful role to let off steam instead. Reviews that constist of a couple of lines without a single in-depth argument about the value of your work or lack of thereof. These are disappointing. Especially for someone like me, who takes a lot of time to write a thorough review (somewhat naive and not sufficiently familiar with the academic game yet).

However, these are even more disappointing in the context of our changing academic/ research landscapes. The more dependent (young) researchers get on these reviews – not only in terms of getting their articles published, but more importantly in terms of getting research grants and jobs – the more weight these reviews and the people writing them get. In a time of economic crisis and budget cutbacks nasty reviews might become a nail in the coffin of an early-stage researcher’s career. That is why I would like to make a plea to all the „blind reviewers“ out there – especially those who have been socialized in a university system with lifelong positions free of evaluations or agreements of performance – to write responsible reviews (not necessarily positive, but fair). For those of you, who are annoyed by unjustified review(er)s I suggest listening to „never enough“ by The Cure – I’m sure you’ll find some parallels to the absurdity of the academic world. Enjoy!

goodtosee #5: video archive of HUMlab lectures/ digital humanities 2002-?

Posted on 18 May 2011 by astrid

Yesterday I gave a talk in HUMlab: “Search technology in society. Constructing search engines, shaping knowledge”. I was excited to present and discuss my research in this vibrant space and get feed-back from the wonderful HUMlab crowd! I really enjoyed the discussions that even continued after the talk – thanks for that!

Since the lab is not only a physical space, but also a highly digital space or “media place” – as the director Patrik Svensson himself often calls it – the HUMlab seminars are also live streamed and archived. I highly recommend to check out this rich repertoire of HUMlab lectures that goes back to the year of 2002 (!). The seminars are primarily dealing with research/ theories of the digital humanities, but also new media studies, digital sociology and related fields. This video archive assembles exciting scholars such as Whitney Trettien, Alan Liu, Rita Raley – just to name a few of the most recent speakers – and covers a wide variety of issues such as reading and writing in the digital age, cyberarcheology, digital modernism, online art production, file sharing communities and many more as you will find out here.. I’m really happy to be now part of this truly great video archive 🙂

suma awards 2011

Posted on 13 May 2011 by astrid

Check out the SuMa Awards 2011 by the SuMa-eV. The SuMa-eV is a society with the central goal to assure free access to knowledge. In their doing they particularly focus on search engines, that have become central access points to the web and digital knowledge. Their central aim is to work towards a landscape of free, heterogeneous, and non-monopolistic search engines. More concretely, their goal is to raise awareness and information/ digital skills in the public and policy realm, but also to develop alternative technologies.

In addition to these activities they anually award works dealing with search engines or the future of digital knowledge in a more broader sense. That’s how they describe their call:

Our aim is to focus attention on search engines’ role in providing access to online information. The awards address all members of society: artists, scientists, journalists, parents, teachers – everyone who has something to say about the way search engines shape their information environment is welcome to send in contributions.

Our goal is to encourage public debate about the importance of our information environment for the future development of society. We want to spur innovative approaches to all aspects of search engines, not merely to the technical characteristics.

We welcome contributions in any format: text (scientific, journalistic, legal, literary, etc.), audio, video, multimedia, code, or any manner of artistic expression. They may take any style or mood, whether it be analytical, provocative, descriptive, or other. For inspiration, take a look at last year’s winners or at our project gallery. Anyone may take part – simply send your project description to: info@suma-ev.de.

The deadline is 30 June 2011. The prize is worth approx. 3000 EUR & the award ceremony will take place in Berlin, 28 September 2011. More infos on their website or my blogpost “my phd gets a suma award“.

notes from vienna

Author Archives: astrid