Google's obscene machine

The judgement of good taste and social values is something that is usually left up to the individual who is considered to have their own set of ‘good taste’ preferences and can be trusted to know right from wrong.

In the states this might be all about to change. Matt Richtel reporting for the New York Times: 'What's obscene? Google could have the answer', outlines how in the trial of a pornographic web operator jurors have been given insight into most Google’d search terms of the residence of Pansacola. Here they are more likely to Google ‘orgy’ than make searches for tamer and less politically incorrect terms. I had to contain my amusement when ‘watermelon’ was given as the yardstick contrast to ‘orgy’, although perhaps the fruitier connotation is lost on our American counter-parts.

Amusement aside, this case has serious implications for the rest of us in the Google world. Privacy is an obvious area for debate especially in terms of the storing and observing of individual data. Only this week councils in the UK have been reprimanded for using surveillance technologies for ‘minor’ deviant activities such as dog fouling and littering, accused of being; 'intrusive, ineffective and expensive'. The prospect of having measurements and judgements against Google searches can be viewed as invasive. However, it is worth while keeping in mind that the very appeal of Google that is THE ubiquitous search engine is in itself significant and perhaps mean that the site should (rather unsurprisingly) carry the expected insidious inspection of all our actions.

For the record this does not leave me feeling entirely comfortable with how my data is recorded, the loss of control in terms of the where, when and to whom such records are disclosed should be highlighted and are an important topic for public consideration. Of course in the Pansacola community case, it is hard to argue anything against privacy considerations when Internet porn and misappropriate web surfing is involved.

All we can do for now is Google and watch this space…

Google wants our health

In the 1990s we celebrated the free-reign of a cyberspace. With a freedom to create a ‘new’ persona that stayed online and traversed the technology only world. Today and in the era of Web 2.0 this approach has been replaced by the necessary replication of the ‘real’ person across various digital arenas; from SNSs, blogs, webpages amongst a whole host of other shared content. Now who we say we are has meaning and must reflect a true and trusted identity.

Trust, is an important issue. The latest from the Google giants is the launch of a freely contributed to (typically Google) Google Health platform. As the Dr health of data, with your Google account information about your personal health can be:

• Stored in one place; with notes from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies
• Used to keep medical practitioners up to date with your health status
• Provide you with health information about healthy issues

And so we’ve reached a point of convergence: From focus on the material hardware of machines and technology to accentuation of software sorted content and information data. In view of this the repositories of information that Google, Facebook, YouTube etc hold, represent a new data materialism that means matter matters. The storage of personal data has become invisible, we choose to volunteer and to contribute snap-shots about ourselves that are stored, seen and processed by others. Consequently we are mostly unaware of what goes on in the ‘big black box’ of the web in terms of our data. The re-configuration of channels of identity information operate as an invisible system of secretiveness, silently running in the background.

Put simply; after Google we do not know what our information does, nor where it is.

But does any of this matter?

We select the types of data and information to share, and invest a level of trust to the sites and people to whom we give access. This means that we can’t just expect information to stay static, it moves and shifts as sites update and other users sift through data. The structures are self-concealing; put a new album on Flickr and where does it go?... And who is looking at it?

Perhaps we are better off unaware of the what and where our data goes and to have faith in the user-friendliness of our social software. Ultimately our data may not be strictly our own, but we have a measure of control with how we contribute and recreate ourselves across the web. And whether Google Health is the new Dr for our healthy needs.

Another version of this post was published at GirlGeekdom