The Googlization of Everything by Siva Vaidhyanathan

Author:Siva Vaidhyanathan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2011-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

GOOGLE AND THE PROSPECTS FOR A GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY

Resistance to infrastructural imperialism and the spread of the values espoused by techno-fundamentalists is scarcely limited to oppressive regimes. China is hardly the sole example of a state that effectively censors Internet traffic and thwarts political dissent. As the Internet scholar Rebecca MacKinnon wrote during the June 2009 crackdown on Google and other Internet services in China, “The Internet censorship club is expanding and now includes a growing number of democracies. Legislators are under growing pressure from family groups to ‘do something’ in the face of all the threats sloshing around the Internet, and the risk of overstepping is high.” Germany was considering a national censorship system through which Internet service providers would be required to block a secret list of sites. Australia and the United Kingdom have for a number of years maintained a similar national censorship list.44 While none of these states censor as pervasively, disruptively, or effectively as China does, it’s clear that China has strong partners in efforts to restrict the use of the Internet.

In each of these countries, Google follows orders from the state and thus actively (albeit tangentially and grudgingly) participates in the censorship of the Internet. Even in the United States, digital copyright laws have forced Google to aid the Church of Scientology in its efforts to squelch Web critics. In addition, the United States has for a decade been requiring libraries and schools to install Web filter software similar to the software that the Chinese government attempted to mandate for all Chinese computers for the same overt reason: to restrict access to sites suspected of supplying pornography. Such software, of course, also restricts material of political significance. As I have stated above, measuring by scale or effect, it’s improper to compare the Chinese efforts to restrict the flow of information with those of the United States and other democracies. But it’s a mistake to single out China as the only significant place where Web censorship is a matter of policy.45

The liberal values espoused by techno-fundamentalists and corporations such as Google encounter resistance when they meet the realities of corporate and nation-state behavior. The struggle to speak freely on the global network of networks illustrates the daunting challenges of forging a “global civil society” or a media environment in which citizens around the world can organize, communicate, and participate openly and equally. What, then, are the potentials for actually realizing those ideals?

In part, the answer lies in the development of entities that lie outside state sovereignty and outside the economic imperatives and constraints of the corporation. As communication and transportation technologies have connected people in more efficient ways over the past three decades, we have seen the rise in importance of organizations and social networks that operate across borders and outside state control. Paradigmatic civil-society organizations include Amnesty International, Oxfam, Falun Gong, the Catholic Church, the International Olympic Committee, FIFA, and the International Red Cross. But this category also includes smaller and more diverse collections

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