Google Me
One-Click Democracy
Published on 3. October 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-0-8232-7807-7 (ISBN)
Description
"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 naivete 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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"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 UniversityMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 151 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
270 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8232-7807-7 (9780823278077)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Barbara Cassin (Author)
Barbara Cassin is Director of Research at the CNRS in Paris and President of the College 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.
Barbara Cassin is Director of Research at the CNRS in Paris and President of the College 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.
Content
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