Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe Review

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Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe Review
Jean-Noël Jeanneney, the president of the National Library of France, sounds a clarion call to his fellow Europeans: organize a large-scale, Europe-wide digitization project or risk ceding the dissemination of Europe's cultural heritage to the whim of an American corporation. He argues not so much against the globalization of knowledge per se but more against what he considers Google's incomplete form of globalization, which inevitably favors Anglo-American cultural products above the rest of the world's. The alternative Jeanneney proposes relies primarily on public funding; although he does not exclude the participation of the private sector, he would like to see the European response to Google emerge from carefully crafted agreements between national libraries and other cultural institutions.
Jeanneney comes across as a savvy politician who knows how to organize European-wide initiatives. He puts together a long list of all the national and European agencies he thinks should become involved in the project. The number of people from different agencies and industries and nations who need to be consulted contrasts sharply with Google's straight-forward plan to get started. I guess a lot depends on whether you think good ideas emerge more frequently from garages in Silicon Valley or meeting parlors in Brussels. Pragmatists like William James and John Dewey taught Americans to exercise healthy skepticism against affording "experts" in any field of knowledge an undue level of influence. The democratization of knowledge should generally decrease the cultural weight of the elite, who tend to privilege their social situation more than they let on. Is the danger of political elitism not as serious as that of economic plebeianism? Obviously, Jeanneney speaks to Americans across a philosophical divide about the role of the state in promoting culture.
Jeanneney is at pains throughout "Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge" to make clear that he is offering a constructive proposal. However, despite his protestations that he is not out simply to criticize Google, his argument depends on demonstrating that Google has gone about digitizing and organizing the world's information in a wrongheaded way. "...The errors (I'm speaking euphemistically) committed by Google are instructive," he writes. "Whatever it does, we should do the opposite."
Jeanneney's argument against Google's approach to digitization fails in the end to convince in part because he operates with several unconvincing assumptions. His fundamental presupposition is that not all printed books can be digitized. This leads him to pose the all-important question of how properly to select those books which will be digitized. However, is it really "beyond what we can reasonably envision" to conceive of digitizing "all the books that have been printed since the time of Gutenberg"? Google has made a prodigious start toward this goal and has since been joined by Microsoft and other competitors. Who is to say that the vast majority of the world's literature will not eventually be digitized because of such private initiatives? The objection that selections must be made will then be rendered moot, as Jeanneney tacitly concedes.
Among his other questionable assumptions is, for example, Jeanneney's contention that Google's search technology homogenizes knowledge by returning over and again only the most highly-ranked results. He worries about the cultural effect of returning what he terms the "gondola end" of information, by which he means that only the most popular books will be seen by most searchers. The underlying worry is that French and other European literature will never be discovered. It's interesting to juxtapose Jeanneney's concern about the "gondola end" of searches with Chris Anderson's discussion of the "long tail." Anderson argues convincingly that the digital era has greatly expanded our access to otherwise inaccessible and difficult-to-find materials. His claim is that the real action is in the "long tail," not in the "gondola end," and that cultural sphere has become far richer and more diverse since the commercialization of the Internet. What makes Google such a good search engine, after all? Among its virtues is its uncanny ability to return the needle-in-the-haystack result, which might otherwise remain hidden forever in some obscure webpage. Google is all about discoverability, not about simply directing its users to the same old sites over and again. Why shouldn't Google's Book Search operate the same way?
Jeanneney makes much of the distinction between information and knowledge. He cites Michael Gorman, past president of the American Library Association, with approval for contending that that books should be read all the way through, not simply as snippets. It's not the case, however, that most users are seeking to replace the experience of reading books with searching for snippets in books. What many scholars are looking for when using Google Book Search is a list of books to read. Again, it's about discoverability. Google Book Search provides information about where to go about gaining knowledge. It may be that the next place to turn is the library or bookstore. Jeanneney recognizes as much when he argues that new forms of media do not generally replace the media which preceded it. He contends, quite rightly in my estimation, that Google Book Search will not replace the printed book. (Why he feels it necessary then to advocate protectionist policies for bookstores and publishers is not clear.) Google provides an additional tool for gaining knowledge. Let's hope that Jeanneney's Europeans will contribute another such tool.
"Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge" provides valuable insight into the way that traditional European librarians and brokers of culture think. Jeanneney provides a good case for taking a more cautious and methodical approach to digitization and organization, although American readers will have to disregard a few silly and nonsensical digs against market-oriented capitalism when reading it. "Upon what principle is [Google's search algorithm] founded?" asks Jeanneney. "Like the basic ingredient of Coca-Cola, it remains a well-guarded corporate secret." (I'm confident that Coca-Cola's basic ingredient is water in any case.) But, in general, Jeanneney's book serves its readers by raising critical questions about the commercial origins of many current digitization projects and by pointing out the cultural significance of making the full variety of the world's printed literature more readily accessible to anyone with access to an Internet connection.Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe Overview

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