Archived Weblog Entry - 09/14/2005: "Blog Search"

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09/14/2005 Archived Entry: "Blog Search"

Blog Search
Google's Blog Search. This is indeed the age of the search. The search is about finding out stuff ("How do you spell..." "What's the capital of..." "Who wrote...." "I wonder what happened to...") but it is also an extension of celebritacy ("Who's talking about me!" "Who links to me!" "Where am I on the Web!"). There are now search engines for all kinds of tasks. How much information, however, do we find, think about, connect to, consider. . .There are random searches ("I feel lucky") and searches done for us (blogs like Metafilter or BoingBoing). The randomness of the search, the fight for top billing, the anxiety some folks feel when words they regret writing pop up on a search return, the innovative juxtaposition of searches (like a9.com or the mapping features of finding stores in your city), the feeling that you've been left out ("Why, when I type "Yellow Dog" into this new Google search engine, this blog doesn't show up?"). If the point of new media, as McLuhan noted, is the dramatic shift in perspective which occurs (the seamless web of experience, the everything at once global village), then the implications of the search include the perspective of always looking, always wandering, always moving. Fixed perspective yields to searched perspective.

Update
On the other hand, I am reminded by a recent thread on our field's main listserv that this sense of perspective as search is by no means universal (yet). The tendency for fixed positions/perspectives is, of course, still dominant. It irks me most in terms of the political. Most academic discourse which surrounds political issues - local or global - is quite fixed in perspective; the dominant issues divided into quick binaries, simplistic understandings of complex affairs, and that which one objects to are often reflected in one's very position. There is as well some show-boating here (lots of politics as performance) but also knee-jerk responses which are as fixed as they come.
But then again, academic culture is hardly new media oriented. It shouldn't shock too much to see academic knee jerk responses.

Replies: 1 Comment

Just political issues? Despite our reputation for embracing complexity, I see a lot more fixity than dynamism or flexibility in the academy, and not only because of institutional or disciplinary constraints. I'm not sure what kind of issues, if any, regularly operate outside of this kind of thinking.

Posted by cbd @ 09/14/2005 07:15 PM EST