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Googlewashing and the Second Superpower
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Thursday, April 03 @ 11:08:33 EST Free Expression
Andrew Orlowski has a prickly but trenchant analysis in The Register on the online meme economy and the dangers of information bottlenecks. At issue is the meaning of the phrase "the second superpower."

The phrase was originally coined by a New York Times reporter to describe the world-wide anti-war movement. It's a catchy phrase and it responds to a global movement linking tens and hundreds of millions of people. But then the bloggers got hold of it, and it came to mean, not global public opinion, but global online opinion, a concept with great intuitive appeal to the narcissistic blogosphere. And what had started out as a phrase with very strong political overtones has been subtly drained of much of its ideological impact.

Why does this matter? Because the new meaning has almost completely supplanted the old one, at least according to Google. Never mind the millions of people in the streets -- the online zeitgeist is in the hands of the few, the proud, the A-list. And while the blog world may be internally "democratic," it's not always representative of the world beyond. Especially on issues that directly concern blogs and their importance, it has some strong collective biases.

Agree with Orlowski or disagree with him, but don't miss this piece.

 
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Re: Googlewashing and the Second Superpower (Score: 1)
by aether on Sunday, April 06 @ 12:21:04 EDT
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Hmm, poor Jim Moore wrote an essay which looks fairly heartfelt and not terribly Machiavellian. The essay he wrote was apparently not good enough for Andrew Orlowski, though. The essay Orlowski describes is much more manipulative, as it's apparently "...sprinkled with trigger words for progressives, liberals and NPR listeners...." And he seems to find something simultaneously sinister and pathetic about Moore suggesting that the World Bank might be put to worthwhile uses. But, as Orlowski comments, "The details need not detain us for very long, because the consequences of this piece are much more important than its anodyne contents."

Orlowski's article has some excellent prose. It's especially effective when he comments, "....Although it took millions of people around the world to compel the Gray Lady to describe the anti-war movement as a "Second Superpower", it took only a handful of webloggers to spin the alternative meaning to manufacture sufficient PageRank™ to flood Google with Moore's alternative, neutered definition...." Translation? Patrick Tyler's phrase struck a chord with some webloggers, some of whom seemed to find something worthwhile in Jim Moore's essay. But Orlowski considers that essay to propagate a "bland, neutered-down" version of Patrick Tyler's meme.

I suspect, though, that the real message behind Orlowski's article is something like, "Controversy sells soap." It's very typical of articles articles on The Register in the way it sets up a paper tiger and then knocks it down. Yes, memes change when when they hit the Internet, because a lot of humans comment on them. That, and a lot of sarcasm, are really the payload of Orlowski's article.


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