‘Aestheticizing Google Critique: A Twenty-Year Retrospective’ is the most recent contribution to the Demos section of Big Data & Society by co-editor Richard Rogers. It is a follow-up to ‘Google and the Politics of Tabs,’ the video screencast documentary on the demise of the online librarian, Rogers made on Google’s 10-year anniversary in 2008. It similarly served as a counterpoint to the company’s own retrospective. This twenty-year look back upon Google critique is an exploration among others of the objects and subjects brought into being by Google according to artists and cultural critics, such as ‘flickering man’, ‘dark web’, ‘filter bubble’ and ‘spammy neighbourhoods’. It also looks ahead, concluding with the observation that now that it is leaving the web, moving onto the streets and beyond, Google is seeking to create new, evocative spaces to (and for) search.
For future editions the Demo section editors welcome input and proposals for reflections on projects related to big data, small data, thick data, data markets, dataveillance, data flow, database logics, platform politics, code and coding, access, distributive aesthetics, visualisation critique, cloud governance and so forth.
