Sunday, October 18, 2009
Muddiest Point (Readings Oct. 20)
Where does Google find the information for its indices of web sites-- on the individual servers?
Reading Notes, Week 7/8 (Oct. 20)
Brin and Page on Google
I don’t like much of Google’s pompous rhetoric in general; and you can’t expect the founders of Google to be more modest or critical about their company, but other than saying that Google is great, they didn’t really say much of any substance about the way the search engine works. In terms of understanding the inner life of Google, the text by Brin and Page, on the “Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” (text from Lis 2000) was more enlightening. Still, there is the fundamental problem of the lack of transparency about Google’s algorithm and the way pages are being ranked, which contradicts this rhetoric of openness and all-inclusiveness, which also glosses over the fact that, while Google may index millions of sites, a lot of other sites are missed by the way the pages are being ranked. Google “will never exhaust the store and meaning of the Web,” wrote Terrence Brooks in his text we read in Lis 2000, “The nature and meaning in the age of Google.” (Information Research, vol. 9. no. 3 (April 2004) I was somewhat puzzled about their statement that Google is pretty much everywhere where there is power, leaving out a critical piece of the chain, the phone and cable companies, the internet service providers, on which almost all access – and lack of access-- depends. So, aggregated on a screen at Google headquarters in Mountain View it may look as if Google is everywhere, but of course this is not true, certainly not in the US, and not in Europe, where a lot of people just do not have and can’t afford internet access through expensive providers. And the way they talked about lack of Google use in Africa, it just sounded as if it were one big market that can and should be conquered – not much of reflection about the many digital divides here as well.
How Internet Infrastructure Works
--Network hierarchy, connected trough POP’s, and NAP’s
-- the internet as a collection of huge corporate networks that all communicate with each other at NAP’s
-- they rely on backbones (fiber optic trunk lines) and routers to talk to each other
-- who pays for the backbones?
-- you can identify net and host through IP address
-- DNS (domain name servers) convert domain names into IP addresses
Andrew Pace, Dismantling Integrated Library Systems, Library Journal, 2/1, 2004
-Web is fueling changes in the ILS
--Problems with the inter-operability of ILS "Today, interoperability in library automation is more myth than reality. Some of us wonder if we may lose more than we gain in this newly dismantled world."
-- There are many vendors, many systems, in many libraries, only pieces operate together
-There are some attempts to start from scratch
-- Better systems costs more -- libraries save at the wrong spot
--Some of the best ideas have come from librarians
--open source is a possibility, but not fully developed(as of 2004)
-- the future lies in integration and re-integration
-- has this chnaged?
I don’t like much of Google’s pompous rhetoric in general; and you can’t expect the founders of Google to be more modest or critical about their company, but other than saying that Google is great, they didn’t really say much of any substance about the way the search engine works. In terms of understanding the inner life of Google, the text by Brin and Page, on the “Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” (text from Lis 2000) was more enlightening. Still, there is the fundamental problem of the lack of transparency about Google’s algorithm and the way pages are being ranked, which contradicts this rhetoric of openness and all-inclusiveness, which also glosses over the fact that, while Google may index millions of sites, a lot of other sites are missed by the way the pages are being ranked. Google “will never exhaust the store and meaning of the Web,” wrote Terrence Brooks in his text we read in Lis 2000, “The nature and meaning in the age of Google.” (Information Research, vol. 9. no. 3 (April 2004) I was somewhat puzzled about their statement that Google is pretty much everywhere where there is power, leaving out a critical piece of the chain, the phone and cable companies, the internet service providers, on which almost all access – and lack of access-- depends. So, aggregated on a screen at Google headquarters in Mountain View it may look as if Google is everywhere, but of course this is not true, certainly not in the US, and not in Europe, where a lot of people just do not have and can’t afford internet access through expensive providers. And the way they talked about lack of Google use in Africa, it just sounded as if it were one big market that can and should be conquered – not much of reflection about the many digital divides here as well.
How Internet Infrastructure Works
--Network hierarchy, connected trough POP’s, and NAP’s
-- the internet as a collection of huge corporate networks that all communicate with each other at NAP’s
-- they rely on backbones (fiber optic trunk lines) and routers to talk to each other
-- who pays for the backbones?
-- you can identify net and host through IP address
-- DNS (domain name servers) convert domain names into IP addresses
Andrew Pace, Dismantling Integrated Library Systems, Library Journal, 2/1, 2004
-Web is fueling changes in the ILS
--Problems with the inter-operability of ILS "Today, interoperability in library automation is more myth than reality. Some of us wonder if we may lose more than we gain in this newly dismantled world."
-- There are many vendors, many systems, in many libraries, only pieces operate together
-There are some attempts to start from scratch
-- Better systems costs more -- libraries save at the wrong spot
--Some of the best ideas have come from librarians
--open source is a possibility, but not fully developed(as of 2004)
-- the future lies in integration and re-integration
-- has this chnaged?
Comments Week 7 or 8 (Oct. 20)
Commented on:
http://preservingtim.blogspot.com/
And on:
http://jonwebsterslis2600blog.blogspot.com
http://preservingtim.blogspot.com/
And on:
http://jonwebsterslis2600blog.blogspot.com
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