Sunday, December 25, 2011

Can the Invisible Web find the Invisible Expanding Collective?


Discussion on the invisibility of people and data.

Frank: I was watching a TV program about a photographer who took some photos of a group in London. And I thought, “They look interesting.  I’ll google them.” Didn’t find them.
Jill: So famous as to be on BBC but Google couldn’t find them? Who was the group?
Frank: The Invisible Expanding Collective.  A group of squatters. Or “site sitters” as they called themselves.
Jill: Ha! Of course you couldn’t find them. They’re invisible.
Frank: Well, not so invisible. There was one article in the Guardian from ten years ago. But nothing else.
Jill: There’d be something else about them. On the invisible web. The iceberg-like 90% of the internet that google can’t find.
Frank: Maybe. Like the underworld. People used to believe in ghosts. Then it was the invisible man: Wells, H.G. A mention of invisible literature: Ballard J.G. Now it’s the invisible web. Bergman, M.K.
____________
Voice-over

Invisible, you can do a lot of stunts, entertaining and evil.

Entertaining, as China’s Invisible man shows.

Or evil, as  Invisible Darien beats up a mime.

Quizzical, as in a movie quiz with the faces taken out.

There are many reasons why things are invisible on the internet.
One of the more interesting explanations is that of Eli Paiser 
 who claims search engine algorithms invisibly filter what they think we want to see. What Google serves you may not be the same as what Google dishes up for me. He talks about “invisible internet information bubbles” on TED.
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4 comments:

rolenzo said...

OH! and here I've been thinking was feeling faint... now I realize that I was feeling more than faint: invisible. Of course you can see right through my tissue of obfuscation, that goes with the anti-territory. I owe it all to my transparents.

rolenzo the wraith

Barry Natusch said...

OH! ROHLENZO! You missaged almost as soon as I'd POHSTED. It took me by surprise since I was just going out to nail a few more planks on the tumbledown casa which is being blown to bits by the roaring forties down here near Tierra del Fuego. Soon even my my abode will be all but invisible and and I, like Andersen's emperor (not your Christensen this time), will feel like I am parading my lack of garb in front of a sceptical crowd. I might add, our transparents see through us all.

Anonymous said...

It's knowledgeable! Yes, nowadays people depend on the HT devices a lot. It seems invisible, but it's not. If we don't pay attention to, it might cause a big problem. That's the almost people do. Awareness, it includes tangible and invisible. People aware of what they familiar with. To sense and use, it just likes to have the meditation. Think, and feel it. it always there.

Barry Natusch said...

I wouldn't go so far as Shakespeare in saying "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport."

But I am tempted to rephrase it as, "As chimps to keepers, are we to FaceBook and Google, they watch us jump for their sport."