[governance] Halal Search Engine

[Parminder]

Hi All

All the defense of 'insider or closed communities' on the Internet given 
by a few in this thread is indeed inspiring. A good indication of how we 
can easily lose perspective in the new digital reality - which is indeed 
very new in many ways, and needs a new thorough consideration.  To be 
able to  build such communities is just an extension of the fundamental 
right of association which has more or less been uniformly recognized, 
and is a key socio-political right.

However one does understand the concerns of those who feel that such a 
religious community based search engine may indeed be a dangerous trend. 
And we need to look at these concerns closely and seriously. The way the 
digital space can connect all those with similar views - and, this is 
important to note, correspondingly, cut off all those whose views we are 
already prejudiced not to agree with - has a deleterious impact on 
'public space/sphere/ media'. 

We need a strong and vibrant public sphere/ media, which is a space 
where we are almost  nilly willy thrown in along with many others with 
whom we may not instinctively agree, to keep our polity, which is the 
basis of our rights, alive. There are no rights without an active 
polity, and no active polity without a shared public sphere/ media.

Digital reality is having a very strong negative impact on such shared 
spaces across socio-political spectrum. In India, though we were always 
a very unequal society, at least till very recently everyone, rich and 
the (literate) poor, more or less read the same newspaper. We now have 
media which is strongly socially-segmented, and it portends very badly 
for the future of our society as a cohesive socio-political entity.

My point is, while we hail our rights, not to think of structural 
deformities that may be getting set up in our societies, and not 
thinking of the possible remedial actions - new political and governance 
mechanism being perhaps primary among them - we may be being 
short-sighted. Our rights wont go far if we lose our political character.

parminder

Shahzad Ahmad wrote:
> Here is more information and background on this... forwarded from another 
> list.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Helmi Noman" <>
>
>
> For those interested in more info about this search engine
>
> http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090907/NATIONAL/709069866/1041/FOREIGN
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Milton L Mueller" <mueller at syr.edu>
> To: <governance at lists.cpsr.org>; "Ian Peter" <ian.peter at ianpeter.com>; "Avri 
> Doria" <avri at psg.com>
> Sent: Monday, September 07, 2009 3:58 AM
> Subject: RE: [governance] Halal Search Engine
>
>
> You can pay to be listed in the CLEARLY MARKED and SEPARATED sponsored 
> links, which in fact attract far fewer clicks than the regular ones. Google 
> was the first to clearly separate them and NOT make their regular rankings 
> depend in any way on payments, and that of course is why it won the market - 
> it really was better for finding what you were looking for than the 
> alternatives. That set the standard for Bing, which is actually a very good 
> competitor now if you haven't tried it. All hail market competition! What a 
> friend we have in....Mammon!! Genuflect to Market FUNDAMENTALISM ;-)
>
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ian Peter [mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com]
>> Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2009 3:52 PM
>> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Avri Doria
>> Subject: Re: [governance] Halal Search Engine
>>
>> ( a couple of people disputed this)
>>
>> The most obvious example is that on any common Google search the first few
>> results that come through may be sponsored links - identified as such if
>> you
>> have good eyes and bother to look, but the first results nevertheless. You
>> can pay to be number one on a Google search results listing, that's the
>> bottom line.
>>
>> Beyond that - because Google doesn't release its algorithms this is
>> unproven. But articles such as this http://www.seobook.com/google-branding
>> do tend to suggest new factors coming into results.
>>
>>     
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