“Google is a champion of cultural democracy, but without culture and without democracy.” In this witty and polemical critique the philosopher Barbara Cassin takes aim at Google and our culture of big data. Enlisting her formidable knowledge of the rhetorical tradition, Cassin demolishes the Google myth of a “good” tech company and its “democracy of clicks,” laying bare the philosophical poverty and political naiveté that underwrites its founding slogans: “Organize the world’s information,” and “Don’t be evil.” For Cassin, this conjunction of globalizing knowledge and moral imperative is frighteningly similar to the way American demagogues justify their own universalizing mission before the world.
While sensitive to the possibilities of technology and to Google’s playful appeal, Cassin shows what is lost when a narrow worship of information becomes dogma, such that research comes to mean data mining and other languages become provincial “flavors” folded into an impoverished Globish, or global English.
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A witty, philosophically-informed, and openly polemical critique by Barbara Cassin of Google that looks at Google’s claims to organize knowledge, and its alleged ethical basis. This critique goes to the heart of the assumed benefits to humanity of increasingly advanced internet technology.
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Translator's Preface Preface to the English-Language Edition Introduction: Why Be Interested in Google? Chapter 1. Google Makes the Internet Apparent Chapter 2. Google Inc.: From Search to Global Capital Chapter 3. "Our mission is to organize the world's information" Chapter 4. "Don't Be Evil" Chapter 5. On Cultural Democracy Index
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"A readable and entertaining, yet serious indictment of informational culture. Cassin's reflections give us a critical space to consider the cost of our acquiescence to the quantification of culture that lies at the heart of today's information-driven capitalism." -- -Mark B. N. Hansen Duke University
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A readable and entertaining, yet serious indictment of informational culture. Cassin, a philosopher and renowned scholar of ancient thought, brings a philosophical perspective to the rise of Google and its impact on a wide range of cultural activities. Her reflections give us a critical space to consider the cost of our acquiescence to the quantification of culture that lies at the heart of today’s information-driven capitalism. The result is a provocative and potentially transformative contribution to contemporary scholarship on Google and internet culture more generally.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780823278077
Publisert
2017-10-03
Utgiver
Vendor
Fordham University Press
Høyde
216 mm
Bredde
140 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
176
Forfatter
Oversetter
Om bidragsyterne
Barbara Cassin (Author)Barbara Cassin is Director of Research at the CNRS in Paris and President of the Collège International de Philosophie. Her Dictionary of Untranslatables has been adapted into five languages, and her Nostalgia: When Are We Ever at Home? won the 2015 French Voices Grand Prize. Her most recent book to appear in English is Heidegger: His Life and His Philosophy (coauthored with Alain Badiou).
Michael Syrotinski (Translator)
Michael Syrotinski is Marshall Professor of French at the University of Glasgow.