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<DIV><FONT color=#800000>Remember the HUGE protests in the months leading up to
the Iraq invasion? How even the corporate media picked up on the phrase 'Second
Superpower"? Well, now we how a new term emerges, Googlewashed - purposeful
manipulation of Google's "Page Rank" system of determining the order of
search results...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#800000>CP</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#800000></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#800000>FYI Recommend using PIR's Anonymous Google -Watch Proxy
- <A
href="http://www.google-watch.org/cgi-bin/proxy.htm">http://www.google-watch.org/cgi-bin/proxy.htm</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#800000></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV class=storyhead><FONT color=#800000></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV class=storyhead><FONT color=#800000><A
href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30087.html">http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30087.html</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=storyhead> </DIV>
<DIV class=storyhead>Anti-war slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed... in
42 days</DIV>
<DIV class=storybyline>By <A
href="mailto:andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk">Andrew Orlowski in San
Francisco</A></DIV>
<DIV class=indexposted>Posted: 03/04/2003 at 12:12 GMT</DIV><BR>
<DIV class=storybody>This year marks the 100th anniversary of George Orwell's
birth, and the writer who best explained the power of language on politics would
be amazed what can be done with the Internet. <BR><BR>On February 17 a front
page news analysis in the <I>New York Times</I> bylined by Patrick Tyler
described the global anti-war protests as the emergence of "the second
superpower". <BR><BR>Tyler wrote: "...the huge anti-war demonstrations around
the world this weekend are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on
the planet: the United States and world public opinion." <BR><BR>This potent
phrase spread rapidly. <BR><BR>Anti-war campaigners, peace groups and NGOs took
to describing the global popular protest as "the second superpower" [<A
href="http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0303/S00377.htm"
target=new>Greenpeace release</A>]. And in less than a month, the phrase was
being used by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. [<A
href="http://registration.ft.com/registration/sub/barrier.jsp?location=http%3A//news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer%3fpagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory%26c=StoryFT%26cid=1045511627296%26ft_acl=&resource=ftarc"
target=new><I>Financial Times</I> - reg req'd</A>]. <BR><BR>And a week ago, a
Google search for the phrase would have shown the vigorous propagation of this
'meme'. <BR><BR><B>Rub out the word</B> <BR>Then came <A
href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jmoore/secondsuperpower.html"
target=new>this</A>. Entitled <I>The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful
Head</I>, by James F Moore, it was accompanied by a brand new blog. <BR><BR>The
details need not detain us for very long, because the consequences of this piece
are much more important than its anodyne contents. <BR><BR>It's a plea for net
users to organize themselves as a "superpower", and represents a class of
techno-utopian literature that John Perry Barlow has been promoting - the same
sappy stuff, but not as well written - for the past ten years. <BR><BR>Only note
how this example is sprinkled with trigger words for progressives, liberals and
NPR listeners. It concludes - if you can find your way through this mound of
feel-good styrofoam peanuts - "we do not have to create a world where
differences are resolved by war. It is not our destiny to live in a world of
destruction, tedium, and tragedy. We will create a world of peace". <BR><BR>In
common with the genre, there's no social or political context, although the
author offers a single specific instruction that is very jarring in the
surrounding blandness: we must co-operate with The World Bank. Huh? <BR><BR>It's
politics with the politics taken out: in short, it's "revolution lite".
<BR><BR>Now here's the important bit. Look what the phrase "Second Superpower"
produces on Google now. <A
href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Second+Superpower%22&btnG=Google+Search"
target=new>Try it!</A>. Moore's essay is right there at the top. And not just
first, but it already occupies all but three of the first <I>thirty</I> spots.
<BR><BR>The bashful Moore writes: "It was nice of Dave Winer [weblog tools
vendor] and Doc Searls [advertising consultant] to pick up on it, even if it's
not really ready for much exposure." No matter, Moore is an overnight A-list
blogging superstar, at his very first attempt. <BR><BR>Although it took millions
of people around the world to compel the Gray Lady to describe the anti-war
movement as a "Second Superpower", it took only a handful of webloggers to spin
the alternative meaning to manufacture sufficient PageRank™ to flood Google with
Moore's alternative, neutered definition. <BR><BR>Indeed, if you were wearing
your Google-goggles, and the search engine was your primary view of the world,
you would have a hard time believing that the phrase "Second Superpower" ever
meant anything else. <BR><BR>To all intents and purposes, the original meaning
has been erased. Obliterated, in just seven weeks. <BR><BR>You're especially
susceptible to this if you subscribe to the view that Google's PageRank™ is
"inherently democratic," which is how Google, Inc. describes it. <BR><BR>And
this Googlewash took just 42 days. <BR><BR><B>You are in a twisty maze of
weblogs, all alike</B> <BR>All a strange coincidence, no doubt, but the picture
darkens when you look at a parallel conversation taking place elsewhere, whose
hyperlinks contributed to the redefinition, and help explain how this semantic
ethnic-cleansing took place so quickly. <BR><BR>Moore's subversion of the
meaning of "Secondary Superpower" - his high PageRank™ from derives from
followers of 'A-list' tech bloggers linking from an eerily similar "Emergent
Democracy" discussion list, which in turn takes its name from a similarly essay
posted by Joi Ito [<A
href="http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/03/08/chillin_with_larry_page.html"
target=new>Lunch</A> - <A
href="http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/03/08/shooting_the_breeze_with_stewart_alsop.html"
target=new>Lunch</A> - <A
href="http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/03/10/kim_says_the_buzz_is_back.html"
target=new>Lunch</A> - <A
href="http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/03/25/my_first_segway_ride.html"
target=new>Segway</A> - <A
href="http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/03/31/chatting_about_open_standards_with_president_ando_of_sony.html"
target=new>Lunch</A> - <A
href="http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/04/01/lunch_with_aaron_.html"
target=new>Lunch</A> - <A href="http://joi.mmdc.net/" target=new>Fawning
Parody</A>] who is a colossus of authority in these circles, hence lots of
PageRank™-boosting hyperlinks, and who like Moore, appeared from nowhere as a
figure of authority. <BR><BR>Lunchin' Ito's essay is uncannily similar to
Moore's - both are vague and elusive and fail to describe how the "emergent"
democracy might form a legal framework, a currency, a definition of property or
- most important this, when you're being hit with a stick by a bastard - an
armed resistance (which in polite circles today, we call a "military").
<BR><BR>As with Moore, academic and historical research in this field is vapored
away, as if by magic. <BR><BR>However, we have an idea of how this utopian
"democracy" might look, if we follow the participants of Lunchbox's mailing
list. These participants are quite clear about how <I>they</I> define democracy:
<BR><BR>"Democracy can function perfectly well without people painting their
faces and blocking streets," writes one contributor. <BR><BR><B>42 Days</B>
<BR>Orwell would be amused, indeed. <BR><BR>"Words define action," sums up Alan
Black. Black helps organise San Francisco's annual LitQuake event and is holding
a festival to commemorate Orwell's centenary in the city in June.
<BR><BR>"Newspeak was one of the planks of the totalitarian regime. Big Brother
was constantly redefining history and redefining words - he knew people respond
to key words," he says. "It's interesting that they've identified that the only
way to oppose the one superpower comes from the people, and sought to redefine
that." <BR><BR>But the real marvel is that they did it with so few people. Pew
Research Center's <A
href="http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/reports.asp?Report=87&Section=ReportLevel2&Field=Level2ID&ID=662"
target=new>latest research</A> says the number of Internet users who look at
blogs is " so small that it is not possible to draw statistically meaningful
conclusions about who uses blogs." They peg it at about four per cent. But we're
looking at a small sub-genre of blogdom, the tech blogs, and specifically, we're
looking at an 'A list' of that sub- sub-genre. <BR><BR>Which means that Google
is being "gamed" - and the language perverted - by what in statistical terms in
an extremely small fraction indeed. <BR><BR>That was enough to make a "meaning"
disappear. <BR><BR><B>Googlewash</B> <BR>Writing about Google's collusion with
the People's Republic of China to block access to mainland users, censorship
researcher Seth Finkelsetein observed: <BR><BR>"Contrary to earlier utopian
theories of the Internet, it takes very little effort for governments to cause
certain information simply to vanish for a huge number of people." <BR><BR>Rub
out the word 'government', and replace it with 'weblog A-list'. In this case a
commons resource, this very potent and quite viral phrase, was created by
millions of people. But it was poisoned by a very select number of 'bloggers'.
Possibly a dozen, but no more than 30, we'd guess. <BR><BR>Who is poisoning the
well? <BR><BR>The phrase "greenwash" will be familiar to many of you: it's where
a spot of judicious <A href="http://www.searls.com/tsg/fit.html"
target=new>marketing paint</A> is applied to something decidedly rotten,
transforming it into something that looks as if it's wholesome and radical new,
but which is essentially unchanged. <BR><BR>This is the first Googlewash we've
encountered. 42 days, too. <BR><BR>What else is coming down the pipe?
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