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Information Management Online – Search Evolution
Search technologies are always pushing forward and allowing users greater flexibility in the way they search for and manage the information they retrieve. The days of search being reliant on a long ordered list of blue links are likely to dissolve. It is useful to consider why search developments take place? It would be encouraging to believe that developments in search technologies take place primarily to accommodate a user’s wants and needs, but in reality developments in search often represent a balance between these users’ needs and commercial competition between search companies wishing to gain market advantage. The following extract highlights the commercial influence of information management online;
“Google’s rivals have a marathon task if they want to cut into its market share, said Alex Burmaster, an analyst with market research firm Nielsen NetRatings.” (Search Engine Ask gets a Facelift, 2008)
While the next extract from a BBC article poses another important consideration, in that Google alone holds a highly dominant market share, this share represents Google’s ability to disproportionately influence the current and future developments of Information and Knowledge Management online. It would be wise for companies such as Google to consider the ethical considerations this causes in terms of information control and ownership and to acknowledge that this market dominance puts them in a position of unparalleled responsibility to ensure that the future of information management online is a positive one for our ancestors.
“In the UK, Google dominates with an 80% market share compared to 2% for Ask. In the US, Google’s share is slightly less at 60% but Asks share remains the same. (Search Engine Ask gets a Facelift, 2008)
So in principal, some may find the link between information management of online material and corporate and commercial entities unsettling. One would hope that the preservation and accessibility of this information for our ancestors would be the concern of primacy. Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf is recognised as one of the most important developers of the internet as we know it; in the following quote he highlights the imperative importance of preserving access to information for the future, developing search technologies and avoiding Bit Rot.
“The historians, of course, are beside themselves, because more and more information about our society is in online form. It’s wonderful when you can find it, but it’s awful when you can’t. We start to lose track of what people did, and what actually happened, because we can’t see it anymore, can’t read it. The email is lost, even though the bits are here; we don’t know how to interpret it.” (Know it all, 2008)
One could draw a parallel between Cerf’s comments and that of the problematic process often encountered by organisations when they make the change from traditional records management to ICT based Information Management. The material object, the book and printed word still holds some appeal in that its material form provides society with a re-assuring feeling of permanency. It is the permanency of information online that is of concern to me, in that online media forms are inherently mutable. Web & Social theorist Lunenfeld cites Brown as finding;
“The essential characteristic of digital information is that it can be manipulated easily and very rapidly by computer. It is simply a matter of substituting new digits for old.” Lunenfeld (1999, p. 181) cites Brown (1992)
So in this context, can we ever really have confidence in online information forms and there accurate portrayal of history, and are we equally as naïve to have had such unwavering confidence in the printed word for as long as we have? Can our ancestors trust the information trail we leave them? This it seems is the core ethical debate surrounding information and knowledge management online, as we begin to write history together.
Author: Simon English – Purple Coffee Interactive, Guernsey, Channel Islands.
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