Since there are plenty of reviews and commentary available three years after the fact, I will limit myself to very few general comments, before digging into the one idea that I found relevant about Vaidyanathan's account of Google's rise and hegemony. One aspect that troubled me about the author's discussion is the extreme dependence on 'what ifs'. A large chunk of the (not necessarily unjustified) wariness toward Google and its services seems to be motivated not by factual happenings which unveil Google as malevolent, incompetent or financially unsound; rather, whole chapters of cautionary warnings are predicated on the possibility that, at some point in the future, hypothetical paradigm shifts might lead Google to betraying, perhaps unwillingly, our trust. In this sense, the main truss of the author's rationale for caution ends up being based around possibilist and overall pessimist 'what if' scenarios, so vague and broad in their configuring they can scarcely claim any prescient value. Additionally, all along we run into the implicit assumption that some paradigms will simply always be, and there is no acknowledgement that, for example, Google might be a new kind of financial or cultural entity symptomatic of a paradigm shift, and therefore not be subject entirely to the dynamics that have marked the rise and fall of corporations so far. Overall, Google is discussed as politically being just another instance of the same old thing, institutionally speaking, a point that I and I'm sure some others would contend with.
Once one finishes reading the book, and with the foresight of 2014, Vaidhyanathan's caveats begin to ring somewhat hollow and needlessly conservative, in particular when absurdly pitting against each other online and offline cultural institutions, and of course siding with the latter in spite of stating not to be doing so. A final chapter, vaguely configuring an alternative world-embracing 'human knowledge library' of sorts, is a piece of utopian fluff that irritates more than fascinate, not unlike for example the final chapter of David Harvey's otherwise seminal Spaces of Hope (2000).
There is however one point, actually not new to Vaidhyanathan, which is still certainly relevant within and beyond Google itself. In the book's introduction, he remarks on the tendency, among policymakers, to adopt a technocratic stance toward the resolution of emerging issues: referring to Google, he states that 'the company itself takes a technocratic approach to any larger ethical and social question in its way" (p.8). This is not exclusive to Google, just as this kind of commentary is not exclusive to Vaidhyanathan: Nicholas Carr famously touched on Google's technocratic approach in 'Is Google Making Us Stupid' in 2008 (a thecnocratic solution to the profoundly social issue of cultural literacy) and technocracy is a main subject of Richard Coyne's Technoromanticism (1999), itself building on Stéphan Barron's work on the transformative power of technologies. This all feeds, eventually, into utopian studies and the idea of an ideally perfectible society through technology (assuming, as it seems to be, that all utopias are to a large extent technological).
Vaidhyanathan's chastising of Google as technocratic spans the whole company. Although most of the book concentrates on in -depth discussions of the legal, political and social implications of Google Maps and Google Books, his general argument implies that, in accordance with a contemporary global trends, all of Google ventures have a technocratic, or techno-remedial element to them: a social or cultural shortcoming (that can be monetised) is seen, and a technocentric solution is devised, with the underlying assumption that the trasformative power of technology will be enough to remediate the issue (mapping the world with Street View will make the world accessible at one's fingertips; scanning millions of books will create a global repository of culture) (For more on the parochially remedial power of technology see also Gregg, 2010).
My question is, then, does this hold true for Google Art Project as well? After all, intuitively Google's partnership with museums would seem to be an altogether different beast than the highly monetised, advertisement - driven Google activities Vaidhyanathan acquaints us with - mining user searches for revenue, de facto selling advertising space on Google Maps through hotel booking and restaurant advertisement. Google Art Project even present itself as a not-for-profit enterprise, under the banner of the Google Cultural Institute.
Thinking along these lines is, however, misleading. One of the characteristics of contemporary, global capitalism is the way in which it manages to absorb all life and activity, including that which does not directly produce revenue. The creation of experiences, affectivity and impressions of selfless generosity allows for the penetration of a brand (in this case Google) within the fabric of everyday life, eventually enhancing attitudes toward revenue-producing services. In the end, not-for-profit activities produce actual profit by shaping user's attitudes toward the brand and, eventually, its other products.
Google Art Project has been, since the very start, a key tool in Google's crusade to uphold its PR motto, 'don't be evil'. As part of the Google Cultural Institute, Google Art Project is in a privileged position to present itself as a selfless agent of cultural amelioration working for the common good. In this sense, the stereotypically apolitical, non-partisan 'power of art' to unite and amaze is channeled as a means to lessen the perceived 'evilness' of the very political and partisan decisions that, as a corporation, Google has to take on a daily basis.
The invested channeling of the universally ameliorative powers of art is attained not only through Google Art Project's intentions, but also through the technological means by which art is deployed on Google's platform. As mentioned above, the 'technocratic approach' implies that, once a social, cultural or political problem is identified (in our case, improving Google's image; improving access to art on a global basis; improving the perception of museums on a global scale), a solution is devised that is rooted on a technological advance, which moves from the neutrality of the technical to the realm of the ethically charged - it enters cultural, society and politics.
While not the only one, the first technological remediation that Google proposes through the Google Art Project is the 'gigapixel view', where users can employ a digital drag-and-drop interface to explore in great detail works of art photographed from the collections of participating institutions. Viewers can 'dive into brush-stroke level detail' by zooming into the image, reaching levels of magnification that are usually not accessible not even in the physical museum context: in this sense, the digital platform that Google offers, in its gigapixel iteration, can be interpreted as implicitly resolving what could be perceived as the main issue that stands between the viewer and the true appreciation of art in the physical context - that is, other people. The fact that one can tag and share artworks does not lessen the perception that, if interpreted as alternative rather than integrative to museums, Google Art Project constitutes a setback from the current museal trend toward participation, community and sharing.
There is also the matter of interpretation. For art to be 'accessible' it needs to be understood as well as experienced: if there is one lesson to be taken from the various art upheavals of the latter 20th century, is that art cannot be divorced at any level from the history and ideology in which it was conceived and executed. Google's platform, however, does not offer neither the content, nor the affordances that lend to any kind of actual learning, interpretation, or interfacing with the artwork aside from gazing and surface manipulation: there is no interpretation given, nor the space for imprinting upon the experience the user's own. Google Art Project perhaps technologically remediates our perception, but not our understanding of art.
In spite of these shortcomings, these difficulties that the technocratic approach does not resolve or instead exacerbates, Google Art Project seems to have been a relatively successful tool in improving Google's corporate image: with a few exceptions the platform was very well received by both public and professionals, further indicated by the number of artworks shared by users. Perhaps a stronger collaboration with the institutional counterpart - in this case, museums - than it has been the case in Google Books or Google Street View has been a deciding factor. However, there might also be another, not unrelated but different reason behind the success of Google Art Project in improving Google's corporate image: the convergence of the perceived remedial power of technology, and the socially ameliorative power of art ('public' art, to be intended in the wider meaning of the word) generates a powerfully affective combination that is likely able to resolve any issue that should arise from 'corporate evilness', giving the impression of cultural and social responsibility that Vaidhyanathan diagnosed as lacking from Google corporation. Only time will tell if the company's technocratic approach to art will eventually be successful in posing Google as a truly invested cultural player.
- Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google making us stupid?." Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education 107.2 (2008): 89-94.
- Coyne, Richard. Technoromanticism: digital narrative, holism, and the romance of the real. MIT Press, 2001.- Gregg, Melissa. "Available in selected metros only: Rural melancholy and the promise of online connectivity." Cultural Studies Review 16.1 (2010): 155.- Harvey, David. Spaces of hope. Vol. 7. Univ of California Press, 2000.- Sood, Amit. "Explore Museums and Great Works of Art in the Google Art Project" Official Google Blog (2011).
- Vaidhyanathan, Siva. The Googlization of everything:(and why we should worry). Univ of California Press, 2012.
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