Although the internet itself is apparently a virtual part of reality that is lawless, and ungoverned, it still needs to be organised and have easy searching options for it to be usable by anyone without any expert skills in the field. Even the internet must have some way of cataloguing the information that it stores. Search engines are ways that the internet can be databased by simply using text commands and viewing/searching the results they come up with.
“In computer science, database is defined as a structured collection of data. The data stored in a database is organized for fast search and retrieval by a computer and therefore, it anything but a simple collection of items” – Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media
Lev Manovich
How long have search engines been around exactly? The very first internet search engine was introduced in 1991 and it went by the name ‘Archie‘ or ‘Archie Search Query Form’, however it was dissimilar to the search engines we see now as it only recognised file names, so this meant you had to know precisely what you were looking for. A couple of years later (1993) another search engine appeared on the scene called ‘Veronica‘, which lead the way due to not searching for specific file names it instead looked for key words, for example, apples <and> pears / apples <or> pears. Archie and Veronica are now known as ‘boolean operators‘, which means they work by being able to make a definition between ‘+’ and ‘-‘/’and’ and ‘or’ commands.
Archie in better days...
Which was the first search engine that resembled the ones we use currently (i.e. google, bing, ask etc.)? WebCrawler and Yahoo!, the first meta-data search engines, were both introduced in 1994, unlike their boolean predecessors they only needed keywords to be able to search the net. The biggest search engine yet, Google, first made an appearance in 1998, and like WebCrawler and Yahoo! also used keywords to find search results.
How exactly does Google work? Google works via software programmes known as ‘spiders’. Spiders (aka web crawlers) collects data from the meta-data on webpages, you don’t see this happening but you see the product of it when your search results come up on-screen.
What on Earth is meta-data? Even though the phrase ‘meta-data’ sounds like a solely technological term, can it only be applied to something that’s based within technology? It doesn’t just have to apply to things that are digital, in fact, the easiest way to explain what meta-data is to think of books in a library, and how they’re indexed, each piece of information about the book (i.e. author, date published, publisher etc.) is meta-data.
“Meta Data is technically data that describes other data. In a web page context typical Meta Data includes such things as the page Title, Keywords and a Description” – webteam.waikato.ac.nz
Where can I find this ‘meta-data’? Most browsers enable the user to see the meta-data on screen, by altering the view via the browser’s menu. If you manage to see it, you will see the meta-data that comprises into the web page you were viewing previously, the coded information includes everything from the graphics to the text of a site.
Meta-Data
What about tagging, is that similar to meta-data? Tagging enables the user to organise their on line posts by categorising them, which is similar to meta-data. Tags also can be incorporated into search engine results. When you tag something into a particular category, it’s called ‘folksonomy‘, so tagging is basically the meta-data of a folksonomy. So, on Facebook, do we all have folksonomies of ourselves? People are tagging all of the time, whether it be on blog posts, on photographs or even on a status update. Facebook has the option of tagging people in all three categories, so in theory they’d be an entire folksonomy photo gallery of you at family events and when you’re drunk!
“While there’s a science of classification called taxonomy, Internet developer and information architect Thomas Vander Wal has dubbed the on-the-fly categorization methods used by everyday people “folksonomy.” – SpicyNodes.org
However, is all tagging creating a folksonomy? Some peoples tagging, as it’s ‘user-defined’ might be incorrect or totally irrelevant to the subject matter, making the folksonomy somewhat faulty and misleading. Like anything, there’s always going to be positives and negatives to folksonomies. A plus side to folksonomies is that it enables someone to find multiples things on the subject they were searching. On the down side, as I mentioned there are no rules and regulations to tagging and on the whole folksonomy in general, people might tag an object by its brand name, breed or type rather than what the thing/object is rendering it harder to find.
How do these tagging categories help? For example, if you were looking for a picture of something specific, just type in what you’re looking for and you should get a whole collection of images at your disposal. If you’re looking for information on something, it helps to go on a well-known blogging site and type in the subject you’re researching, you should end up with text after text of information. It helps people collect and study.
PROSUMERS
First of all, what on Earth is/are ‘prosumers‘? Prosumers are people who want to have a product, and get involved with the design of the product. An example of a prosumer would be someone who makes iPod applications for free or at a small price, making them just as a hobby.
The iPod - creating a boom in prosumers?
The word ‘prosumers’ can also relate to the term ‘crowd-sourcing‘. Sites like Threadless.com uses crowd-sourcing to come up with new t-shirt designs for the site via a public vote, the winners don’t get any royalties form their t-shirt design sales. Waze.com is a site which provides real-time traffic information by locating peoples mobile phone signals on the road (for example, if there are loads of signals which are at a standstill on a road, it would equal a traffic jam of some sort). However, is using people to get information and money just like free labor? Obviously, in some ways it is, but on Threadless.com the person will know before hand that they’re not going to get any royalties for their design and they are provided with prize money and ‘store credits’, and simply using the signal of someone’s mobile phone for traffic updates probably isn’t going to hurt/offend anyone.
Is there such thing as free labour on the internet? If there is, what are the examples? Crowd-sourcing, although it doesn’t provide riches, usually has some sort of reward, and if it doesn’t, there is little or no effort that the person has to put into it that it’s not even worth getting anything. For example, moderators are people who work totally for free on forums, moderating the comments posted and the users that are joining up, they have to give up significant amount of free time during the day to do their on line ‘duty’, but is it actually any different to any volunteer job someone would take on in the real world? Although, some could argue that it is out of dedication to the blog that they’re helping manage, so it is a pleasure for them.
digital sprog 