Googling

As we have already suggested in offline discussions, connectivity can be addictive. The need to feel linked to the NOW of network culture is a given for many. Think of the last time you were jonesin' for an email fix. Or when you felt you just had to write another entry to your blog. Blogger is so "user-friendly" - isn't it? But then again, so are many other kinds of paraphernalia available at your local head shop.

OK, so maybe you're hooked. It's not really dangerous, is it? Just because the U.S. Justice Department wants Google to turn over all of their archived search records does not mean that you personally are under surveillance, right? Do you even have enough information available to you right now to articulate a clear opinion on it?

Reading through Wendy Hui Kyong Chun'sfascinating new book, "Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics" (MIT Press), I come across a sentence:

"Inadequate information, combined with an obsession with meaning, drives paranoid behavior."

And yet, as per one of my recent blog entries, William Burroughs tells us

"A paranoiac is someone who has all of the facts at their disposal."

Actually, they are both saying the same thing, even though they may read as exact opposites. That's because Burroughs is playing the junky Satyr spinning his dark web of conspiratorial poetics, while Chun is filtering her writing through a stylized academic theory.

But back to the issue of the U.S. Justice Department wanting Google to turn over all of their archived records. I repeat: do we even have enough information available to us right now to articulate a clear opinion on it?

Whenever I want to find out what's going on in the world, and in this case, the world of civil liberties and my rights to privacy, freedom of speech, etc., my first instinct is to Google it, whatever IT is.

But if I am going to Google a search term like "Google"+"Justice Department"+"First Amendment" am I setting myself up for future interrogation with the Justice Department or is that just some low-grade paranoia creeping into my post-post-structuralist conspiracy theory?

What if I want to find out about the contemporary graffiti scene and the idea of artist bombing? I just did some random Googling on the phrase "artist bombing" and am wondering if the Fed somehow forced Google to hand over its records, would this mean that Attorney General Gonzales and his minions would use such a "search for meaning" as an excuse to keep a close watch on me? Would they share that information with the NSA who could then start wiretapping all of my overseas calls to artist friends who I speak to on the phone occasionally?

Is that just some more low-grade paranoia creeping into my post-post-structuralist conspiracy theory? I would like to think so.

OK: think about when you needed to know something, anything, immediately. Where, then, did you turn to? Google?

The Google Turn.

Google: churning out information faster than you can say "I Feel Lucky"?

(Or will that soon be changed to "I Feel Looked Upon"?)

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Metadata: books, politics, metadata, Google, literature