John Battelle’s book The Search has proven to be a valuable resource for learning about the transformation of the web throughout its public accessibility. Battelle dumbs down the techie jargon and allows the reader to dip a bit into the history of the web. His anthropologic background allows him to paint a fascinating picture of public usage of the Internet. He focuses primarily on the impact of search engines on public usage, power and privacy. The basis of his story was his primitive search interest and fascination with GoogleZeitgeist and his idea of a Database of Intentions.
Batelle lures the reader as he reintroduces the dilemma of public privacy threatened by the traceability of search queries. He blatantly admits the power of web search corporation’s power over public thoughts, ideas and potential actions (Google and the like have power as “Big Brother”). Corporations controlling the future in search, thus control the potential of intelligence about human inquiry. Among the myriad of thought provoking material contained in Batelle’s book is his expression of such dilemmas;
“ If Google and companies like it know what the world wants, powerful organizations become quite interested in them, and vulnerable individuals see them as a threat. Etched into the silicon of Google’s more than 150,000 servers, more likely than not are the agonized clickstreams of a gay man with AIDS, the silent intentions of a would-be bomb maker, the digital bread crumbs of a serial killer. Through companies like Google and the results they serve, an individual’s digital identity is immortalized and can be retrieved upon demand. For now, Google cofounder Sergey Brin has assured me, such demands are neither made nor met. But in the face of such power, how long can that stand?” (Batelle, 2005, p.13)
And so, the story follows Batelle’s intriguing introduction to reveal facts about the founders and maturation and devastation of many early search corporations. How fascinating is it that Yahoo was birthed from two Stanford PhD students avoiding writing their thesis by searching for player stats and season records (on the web), to build a powerhouse of a fantasy basketball team? In the book, the further detailed information about the growth of Yahoo supports more and more among many examples, Batelle’s infatuation with the web being a catalyst for further inquiry. He quotes Thorstein Veblen, “ The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before”.
