Deleterious consequences
How Google's original sociotechnical affordances ultimately shaped 'trusted users' in surveillance capitalism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5260716 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert Ridgway (0000-0002-1483-9996, Aarhus University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Big Data & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2053-9517 • E-ISSN: 2053-9517 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/20539517231171058 |
| OpenAlex | W4368275333 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 34 |
Google dominates around 92% of the search market worldwide (as of November 2022), with most of its revenue derived from search advertising. However, Google's hegemony over search and the resulting implications are not necessarily accidental, arbitrary or (un)intentional. This article revisits Brin and Page's original paper, drawing on six of their key innovations, concerns and design choices ( counting citations or backlinks, trusted user, advertising, personalization, usage data, smart algorithms) to explain the evolution of Google's hypertext search engine technologies through 'moments of contingency', which led to corporate lock-ins. Underpinned by analyses of patents, statements and secondary sources, it elucidates how early Google considerations and certain affordances not only came to shape the web ( backlinks, trusted user, advertising) but subsequently facilitated contemporary surveillance capitalism. Building upon Zuboff's 'Big Other', it describes the ways in which Google as an infrastructure is intertwined with Big Data's platformization and the ad infinitum collection of usage data, beyond just personalization. This extraction and refinement of usage data as 'behavioural surplus' results in 'deleterious consequences': a 'habit of automaticity,' which shapes the trusted user through 'ubiquitous googling' and smart algorithms, whilst simultaneously generating prediction products for surveillance capitalism. Advancing Latour's 'predicting the path' of technological innovation, this cause-and-effect story contributes a new taxonomy of Google sociotechnical affordances to critical STS, media history and web search literature
Affordance · Business · Capitalism · Computer security · Human–computer interaction · Internet privacy · Knowledge management · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Sociology · Sociotechnical system · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Law · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
The Costs of Connection
The Googlization of Everything
Algorithms of Oppression
The Relevance of Algorithms
Null
Data as asset? The measurement, governance, and valuation of digital personal data by Big Tech
Algorithmic Ideology
Big data
Updating to Remain the Same
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook
The business and politics of search engines
Conflicts of interest and incentives to bias
Search engines and the production of academic knowledge
Surveillance and capture
Shaping the Web
The Marvelous Clouds
Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious
Algorithmic memory and the right to be forgotten on the web
Data out of place
Linguistic Capitalism and Algorithmic Mediation
Critical theory of technology and STS
Technology is Society Made Durable
Platform capitalism
The Digital Subject
| Citations per year | 1.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |