Barbara Cassin denounces the democratic pretensions of Google

Barbara Cassin, the French philosopher and director of research at the CNRS, has just published a book entitled 'Google-me: America's second mission'. In an interview conducted by William Bourton, she criticises the democracy that Google claims to practice with its research engine. "When we 'click' on links leading to something, these links and the 'clicks' count as votes. This is what Google calls democracy. As far as I am concerned, this rids the notion of democracy of any political impact. I am sorry, but for me a 'click' is not a vote. The world produced on the Web is not a common world of the political domain. It is simply the world of opinions which is 'squared', that is to say the world of quantity (the number of 'clicks') producing the quality, that is the rank of the page, averaging the complex algorithm which is the secret of the Google's complex fabrication.”

» to the homepage (external link, Le Soir)
More from the press review on the subject » Online media, » Global
All available articles from » William Bourton

» To the complete press review of Monday, January 29, 2007