Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a Googlewash The Second Superpower
The Register has an interesting piece on ‘Googlewash’ that outlines the 42-day history of the term ‘second superpower,’ coined by New York Times journalist Patrick Tyler. Tyler’s pithy thesis was that, in the wake of large-scale anti-war demonstrations, “there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” Then, this article appeared, by James F. Moore. It is a call to arms, so to speak, for internet users to organise themselves as a force for good, to become a second superpower.
This is where Google comes in. Some ‘high profile’ webloggers linked to Moore’s essay, and it’s position in Google’s rankings shot up. It now dominates the first page of a search for second superpower, and Tyler’s original point is hidden from view.
So what? Well, for starters, Tyler makes a genuinely interesting point, Moore simply co-opts it to give his limp cyber-utopian schtick a catchy hook. More importantly, Google is the way into the web for a huge number of users, and I doubt too many dig further than the first page of search results. A high ranking on Google lends an air of credibility to a source. Cases like this show that Googles rankings can be tweaked by a small minority. Those high profile bloggers are tiny in terms of the web as a whole, but they punch above their weight when it comes to Google, so instead of the impartial tool we assume the search engine to be, it turns out those trustworthy results are manipulated by a tiny elite. A mostly harmless tiny elite, for sure, but a tiny elite nonetheless.
Of course, as soon as posts like this one begin to appear on weblogs, Google will take a further hit, and a search for “second superpower” will point people in the direction of various obscure discussions on search engine best practice.
Update (5/4/03):
- A rebuttal, which notes what I failed to: Tyler didn’t use the phrase second superpower in his original piece.
- Self-correction at Plasticbag.
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In defense of my paper—which IS intended to be a call to arms to the peace movement: According to the log files on our server, about 5000 people visited the site or downloaded the pdf version PRIOR to Google even ranking it. This is due to the blogging community picking it up, and a number of email list folks deciding they liked it—and sending the link out. This community picked it up, whether you agree or not, because they simply read and liked the paper. Of the first 42,000 visits (by day 5), only about 3000 came through Google. By the way, as you point out, Orlowsky got it wrong—or intentionally misrepresented it—Tyler didn’t coin the term or even use it, though he did introduce the concept—as a rhetorical flourish used only once—in a story about the protests. My paper, which you may disagree with, is a serious attempt to discuss things that the movement might do come together to be more effective. There was no attempt to googlewash anything—indeed, Orlowsky is the one who has conducted an intentional rhetorical battle, propelling himself into the news by making a false accusation. God bless him, however, because his intervention has caused thousands more to download the original paper. The conflict itself has been mainly for the good, since my main hope is that the movement grasp the notion of itself as a second superpower, and make it happen even more.
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Jim,
The important question remains, who liked your essay? Who was able to link to that essay? There exists, and will probably always exist, a disparity of political power between those who can access the internet and those who can publish on the internet. As the controversy explains, your google ranking is not condusive to web user’s valuation of the information you publish. Thus, that information is not condusive to the wider discussion of that subject matter in which your essay recieved a higher google ranking.
I am not arguing that your work should not be read or that your work is necessarily good or bad. Your situation demonstrates that current indicies cannot gauge the importance of one piece of information over another. It goes to show that google is not a democratic mechanism because a minority of people - those who can publish on the internet - have many more votes than others. Nothing has fundamentally changed about google, but the disparity between viewers and publishers has risen sharply. I am not so sure that centralized systems like google are the answer to indexing the importance of information.
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