Scrutiny

This notice just came through on the Chronicle for Higher Education’s “Wired Campus” mailing:

Rensselaer Polytechnic Starts ‘Science of the Web’ Program

What is the future of the Web? Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute plans to explore this issue when it launches a new academic program next month focused on the emerging academic discipline of “science of the Web.” The field examines the architectural underpinnings of the Web, its social aspects, and who controls the flow of information, among other issues. The university has titled its program: The Tetherless World Constellation. The program will be publicized June 11 at Rensselaer Polytechnic where a panel of experts from academe and industry, including Timothy J. Berners-Lee–who is credited with having invented the Web–will discuss its future. Web users across the world will submit questions for discussion.–Andrea L. Foster

I’ve recently been in conversation with some of my colleagues at Cornell, from both Communication and Information Science, about how to reimagine and rearticulate (dare I say, re-brand) the HCI program here, based on the presence now of a enough people, and a range of people, to really say its something we do. It strikes me that this might be one way to get at some of what HCI is about, while getting away from some of the limits built into its very name and its particular history.

On the other hand, I saw a talk at ICA last week where a very well known scholar in media studies briefed the audience on the emerging discipline they were trying to create, called “cultural science,” which (from an albeit brief and rapid presentation) looked like a push to soak the study of culture in things like evolutionary economics and game theory. The endpoint of the talk was to focus on the “entrepreneurial consumer” — which I think is the most shocklingly wrong direction that the study of culture, media, and society could possibly take.

A regular concern in my class this past spring was whether the kind of worries about media concentration in broadcasting had any parallel in the online world. While its easy to point to Google / Microsoft / Yahoo as an apparent oligopoly, and Microsoft’s attempts over the last few months to benevolently devour Yahoo seemed confirmation, its not exactly clear that the way that media concentration among broadcasters seemed to dovetail so powerfully with commercial imperatives carried over to these players. yes, Google is, at least financially, primarily an advertising company, their business model is to serve every interest, not narrow to a select few that serve everyone, as with NBC.

But here’s a key glimpse of why these concerns do matter in the new media industries, care of Farhad Manjoo at Salon. and I don’t care about this because its “anti-academic”, as I never used their service myself, but in terms of the driving corporate logic:

Microsoft has announced that it is shutting down Live Search Books and Live Search Academic, two search engines that aimed to index scholarly works that are often difficult to find online. The company is also ceasing its ambitious effort to digitize library books, a project that it had long promoted as an alternative to Google’s own such efforts.

The company says it “recognizes” that closing these services will “come as disappointing news” to publishers and Web searchers. And yet Microsoft says it must shut them down anyway, because letting people search through books and academic journals no longer fits into the company’s business strategy.

What’s that new strategy? Microsoft wants to help people who have “high commercial intent.”

I am not making that up. Satya Nadella, the company’s vice president for search, actually uses those words. Microsoft would simply prefer to build search engine just for people looking to buy stuff.

Sigh.

In the next month or so, I’m going to be attempting to back up a bit in my thinking, to take in the big picture of the issues I’m invested in examining in my scholarship. I’m calling it the Big Think 08. We’ll see if the practical realities of life allow it. But, as I go, I’d like to throw to the blog moments and aspects, in an attempt to partially develop this snapshot.

One issue that has always troubled me is the persistent myth of the liberal media. Many have attempted to address this, so its not exactly a new area of study. But its persistence in the face of this examination is quite amazing, and speaks of something else entirely, the way the press gets played within the contemporary U.S. political context. Glenn Greenwald at Salon has a sharp critique of it today, spurred by a comment made by Scott McLellan, former White House Press Secretary for Bush, in his new autobiography:

“the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.”

Greenwald follows this with a litany of evidence of this deference, from the failings of the New York Times in allowing Judy miller’s reporting to stand, or the press adoration of McCain, or their use of military analysts in their Iraq war coverage that were made available by the DoD. He finishes with:

Press secretaries of all types instinctively view the media as adversaries and typically feel besieged by what they perceive to be the media’s unfair hostility. So if even Scott McClellan recognizes the mythical nature of the “liberal media” cliche and sees political journalists as meek little handmaidens for government propaganda, how much longer can this myth be maintained?