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Thursday, 3 April 2003

Googlewash? Hogwash.

Andrew Orlowski has written a rant about bloggers 'googlewashing' cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 phrase 'second superpower'.

Separating out cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 bizarre attacks on Joi Ito for eating lunch, his cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365sis seems to be that 'A-list bloggers' have hijacked and neutered cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 phrase from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Anti-war (or anti-Bush) protesters, and swamped Google with this new interpretation.

In fact, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 original article he cites (reproduced here) did not contain cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 phrase 'second superpower'; it had a throwaway rhetorical flourish in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 first sentence:
The fracturing of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Western alliance over Iraq and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 huge antiwar demonstrations around cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 world this weekend are reminders that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re may still be two superpowers on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 planet: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 United States and world public opinion.

(Orlowski elides cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 first part about cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Western alliance to support his cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365sis that it's all about cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 street, man).

As he says, this meme circulated about cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 web a bit, and eventually James Moore explored cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 idea in more detail, and a broader context than just marching against Bush, combining it with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 preceding discussions on 'emergent democracy' that had been going for a while. Of course this gets a higher rank for 'second superpower' - it is in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 title, and enough people found it interesting enough to link to. (Update: today cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 NYT removed its archives from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 web, so any links to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 original article would now be dead).
Instead of a lot of incoherent slogans, here are people discussing how to bring it about.
Orlowski cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n completely distorts cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 quote from Patrick Nielsen Hayden I posted to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 list. Discussing a report on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 very disruptive, street-blocking protests, where protesters in San Francisco, Boston, Washington and elsewhere shouted cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 same slogan, "This is what democracy looks like!"

Patrick said
No, that's not what democracy looks like.

It's what protest looks like, and it's often cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 right thing to do. And of course "democracy" had better entail significant tolerance of unruly protest, or it's not very democratic.

But that slogan is stupid, even by cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 standards of slogans. Long and often boring meetings are what democracy looks like. Tiresome horse-trading is what democracy looks like. Talking to your neighbors is what democracy looks like.

Democracy can function perfectly well without people painting cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir faces and blocking streets. It can't function at all without that ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r stuff.


The emergent democracy group is about how to build tools and structures to capture democratic intent in a digital world. If you're interested in this, join in.

Perhaps what Orlowski is really worried about is that a group who aren't part of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 clerisy of professional Journalists and activists are taking an interest, and actually discussing ideas calmly and rationally, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365reby attracting links from ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r people, Doc and Dave earned cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir high Google rankings by writing lots of things that people found interesting enough to link to, day after day for many years.

Andrew, if you have interesting things to say about cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 future of democracy, join cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 discussion, but don't troll for cheap links by stooping to selective quotation and ad hominem attacks.

Coda:
I like to link to Orwell's Politics and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 English Language essay at least once a year, if only to remind myself to re-read it. Mr Orlowski could profit from reviewing it too. His neologism 'googlewash' falls down on Orwell's criterion of creating a meaningful metaphor. Orlowski derives it from 'greenwash' which evidently derives from 'whitewash' - to paint over flaws to give a gleaming exterior. Yet 'googlewash' does not follow here - cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 complaint is not that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 new google-friendly definition is hiding cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 flaws of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 old, is it?
As Orwell puts it:
The writer eicá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whecá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r his words mean anything or not.
Posted by Kevin Marks at 16:54

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Kevin Marks
Kevin Marks works on IndieWeb and open web tech. From 2011 to 2013 he was VP of Open Cloud Standards at Salesforce. From 2009 to 2010 he was VP of Web Services at BT. From 2007 to 2009, he worked at Google on OpenSocial. From 2003 to 2007 he was Principal Engineer at Technorati responsible for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 spiders that make sense of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 web and track millions of blogs daily. He has been inventing and innovating for over 25 years in emerging technologies where people, media and computers meet. Before joining Technorati, Kevin spent 5 years in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 QuickTime Engineering team at Apple, building video capture and live streaming into OS X. He was a founder of The Multimedia Corporation in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 UK, where he served as Production Manager and Executive Producer, shipping million-selling products and winning International awards. He has a Masters degree in Physics from Cambridge University and is a BBC-qualified Video Engineer. One of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 driving forces behind microformats.org, he regularly speaks at conferences and symposia on emergent net technologies and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir cultural impact.
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