How does Google mean?...or: "Everything and More"

No, I'm not going to weigh in on Google's (lack of) aesthetic sense, as demonstrated by the search engine's widely panned and short-lived experiment on Thursday during which a large photograph took the place of the usual plain, white background. Because who cares, really.

No, I'm much more interested in pointing out something that I've noticed over the past month or so that appears to the left of the results of an ordinary Google search. Here's a photo I snapped of it:

Anyone?

What immediately comes to my mind, whenever I glance at this side-bar (which I've done many times) is the title of the only published piece of writing by the late David Foster Wallace that I was never able to make it all the way to the end of. I refer to 2003's Everything and More, subtitled: A Compact History of Infinity. This book-length essay, intended (naively) for the general reading public, was Wallace's audacious, gimmicky and controversial attempt to explain set theory ("multiple infinities")—created (or maybe 'discovered'?) by the 19th century German mathematician Georg Cantor—without really using any actual math.

But, more than Wallace's book, it just strikes me that the words and hyperlinks featured in the above snapshot amount to a kind of smart-ass collage or accidental poem. In other words, with your initial search, Google is providing you with "everything." Should "everything" fail to sate your appetite for page upon page of relevant* material, follow the hyperlink, for Google offers you still "more" than mere infinity.

I guess I'm really just thinking about a constellation of things. First, the fact that we don't often talk about Web pages in ways that take account of how arrangements of words, images and—for example—navigational functions impact conveyed meaning. This can encompass both "intentional" and "unintentional" meanings; it can refer to the ways in which words, images and hyperlinks function as collages of juxtapositions, oppositions and organizational schemes. Furthermore, meaning is impacted not only by what exists on the Web page but by what is left out. Finally, meaning is shaped by the sets of expectations that users bring to bear when using a Web page. This is particularly interesting in reference to search engines, in the case of which the user's attention is almost always focused upon the expectation that he or she will encounter immediately thereafter a spectrum of (categories of?) content.

And, of course, there's the Marshall McLuhan-esque question: what, after all, do I mean when I refer to the "content" with which we expect a search engine to "connect" us?

All right. Hope that makes some kind of sense. Time for bed.

ADDENDUM:
It occurs to me that there's significance as regards user-expectations to be attached to the basic function of a search engine: (i) the sheer act of typing words into Google's interface signifies the expectation/intention of obtaining information, data or some other kind of non-tangible artifact, whose 'form' and to some extent, 'content', must be fixed or predictable to you—otherwise (i.e., were results to provide inscrutable artifacts or incomprehensible information), how could you anticipate that the results might have any value to you?; and (ii) usually, the object or objects of a search are characterized simultaneously and to an equal degree by a basic lack of familiarity—otherwise, why would you need to "search" for it in the first place?

In both i and ii are to be found the complicated interplay of contradictions between 'form' and 'content', as well as between anticipated familiarity and anticipated unfamiliarity. In an Internet search, one's capacity to comprehend and derive use from unfamiliar content is conditioned by one's reasonable expectation of familiarity of form.

(Here are some more quotations and aphorisms from the late, great Marshall McLuhan, some of which deal with the form/content dyad.)

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* In the sense of popular and of containing such keywords as are to be found on a given Web location, irrespective of things like context and other 'meaning'-derived metrics.

A lion in lion's clothing: Why Rand Paul's primary victory is a good thing.

I shall attempt to elucidate my view of the results of the recent Republican primary in Kentucky. It's a view that apparently is deemed to be heterodox—if not heretical—among chatterers in progressive-left circles. Specifically, I think that—despite increasingly ugly, politically motivated deviations—Rand Paul is as close to a principled libertarian as we're likely to see as a contender for national office, and that his victory in Kentucky’s May 19 Republican primary for the US Senate is a good thing.

I don't hold this view for political/strategic/operational reasons—i.e.: because Paul's ascendancy might make it easier for some Democratic Party hack to win in the general, or something like that (partly because, in fact, I'm sick of all the DP hacks)—but, rather, because Rand Paul seems for the most part to be an actual libertarian in the mold of his father, Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas. I mean the dude's named after Ayn Rand, for god's sake.

Rand Paul is a lion in lion's clothing, and that's a good thing. What do I mean by this? Well, let me explain. Remember George W. Bush's pre-2000 promises to the effect that he embodied something called "compassionate conservatism"? That's an example of being a lion in lamb's clothing.

See the difference? (And here's an interesting bit of reporting on the unrelated question of where the phrase "compassionate conservatism" comes from.)

Now, before we get into all sorts of metaphysical stuff about lions lying down with lambs, let me just admit up front that my metaphor/comparison doesn't really make sense, once you start thinking about it. So heed this warning and...well, don't. But, anyway.

Give me the Pauls any day. For one thing, it will make for a much better debate. I believe that the US could only benefit from an increased focus upon the tenets of libertarianism. Beyond even its potential impact upon the framing of political discussion, there is a side to libertarianism that should by no means seem to liberals to be entirely unpalatable. For example: what’s wrong with cutting back on the functions of government that exist in practice exclusively to serve the interests of big corporations? While Paul's textbook libertarianism generally causes him to oppose the placing of limitations upon the expenditures of private corporations, his consistent and clearly voiced opposition to our country's reigning, incestuous public-private oligarchy is right on.

From yesterday's Huffington Post:

For all the blaring headlines that Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has attracted for his remarks on the Civil Rights Act and his views on government interference in private enterprise, there is a strand of his libertarianism that -- on occasion -- can be alluring to progressives.

Mainly this is when the discussion turns to foreign policy matters and the Kentucky GOP candidate's skepticism with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his opposition to the Patriot Act.

Occasionally, however, Paul's domestic politics have a bit of post-ideological resonance. And during a Monday appearance on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, that element of his candidacy was briefly on display. Asked a question about campaign finance reform, Paul offered the traditionally conservative denouncement of laws that curb the amount of money spent during an election. But from there he offered a proposal that would be of similar (if not greater) scope and reach.

"What I would do is that for every federal contract, if you sign a federal contract and we pay you, the taxpayer pays you a million dollars, I would put a clause in the contract that you voluntarily accept that you won't lobby or give contributions," he said, "because I think it galls the American people that taxpayer money is paid to contractors who take that taxpayer money and immediately lobby for more money."

This type of proposal would seemingly leave good government officials smiling. That it came from the belle of the Tea Party ball makes it all the more powerful -- not because of its unexpectedness (the Tea Party movement is quite clearly wary of the influence of lobbyists), but because Paul is symbolic for many of the future of the GOP.

Now, the question of whether and to whom Paul symbolizes the future of the GOP is open to debate, to say the least. But, isn't his stance on lobbying and government contracts absolutely correct?

Certainly it would be better if such a challenge came from populist progressives of the left, in the Bernie Sanders mold, but this is Kentucky we’re talking about. And I believe that the anti-oligarchic, anti-Fed, pro-personal privacy, anti-torture/surveillance and pro-transparency aspects of the philosophies of Father and Son Paul should be commended by left-progressives. We can still criticize the Pauls for their stances on many other subjects about which we disagree.

I feel the need to point all of this out because of the somewhat hysterical responses of some purportedly left-progressive-types to the Rand Paul phenomenon. I mean, sure, his performance on the Rachel Maddow show was ham-fisted, but, the idea that his take on the Civil Rights Act makes him a racist is really just too much. Those of us who are serious about wanting to improve political discourse should not be demonizing someone for showing intellectual honesty, however impolitic it might be for him to do so. In fact, the more straightforward and lacking in spin his stance, the greater the duty of the left opposition to express its disagreement straightforwardly.

Rand Paul's views on the Civil Rights Act can be—and are—wrong without being racist. This is the kind of debate we should be taking seriously. It's the mainstream Republicans who aren't worth the time and effort, who will misrepresent themselves to get elected and hold onto power. The notion that Rand Paul is somehow worse than the average "machine"-Republican candidate is absolute balderdash.

To the extent to which the likes of middle-aged pseudo-leftists like The Nation's obnoxious Katha Pollitt (May 22) continue to set the terms of what counts as political debate in progressive circles, we'll never get beyond the intellectual bankruptcy and gridlock of the Culture Wars and the 1960s. I'm sorry, but Baby Boomers like Pollitt just get fatter and more full of shit with each passing day.

By contrast, Robert Scheer's May 19 take on the Pauls and libertarianism I find to be coherent and useful. It is, in fact, the article to which—in the wake of Paul's stumble on the Maddow show—Pollitt's shrill statement is apparently aiming to respond. Still better is Scheer's May 26 follow-up, in which he gets down to what should be the business at hand for those of us on the progressive/left:

Where I agree with [Rand Paul] is that with freedom comes responsibility, and when the financial conglomerates abused their freedom, they, and not the victims they swindled, should have borne the consequences. Instead, they were saved by the taxpayers from their near-death experience, reaping enormous profits and bonuses while the fundamentals of the world economy they almost destroyed remain rotten, as attested by the high rates of housing foreclosures and unemployment and the tens of millions of newly poor dependent on government food handouts.

But the poor will not find much more than food crumbs from a federal government that, thanks to another one of [President Bill] Clinton’s “reforms,” ended the federal obligation to deal with the welfare of the impoverished. Yes, Clinton, not either Paul, father Ron or son. It was Clinton who campaigned to “end welfare as we know it,” and as a result the federal obligation to end poverty, once fervently embraced by even Richard Nixon, was abandoned.

Concern for the poor was devolved to the state governments, and they in turn are in no mood to honor the injunction of all of the world’s great religions that we be judged by how we treat the least among us. That would be poor children, and it is unconscionable that state governments across the nation are cutting programs as elemental as the child care required when you force single mothers to work.

“Cuts to Child Care Subsidy Thwart More Job Seekers” ran the headline in the New York Times on Sunday over a story detailing how in a dozen states there are now sharp cuts in child care for the poor who find jobs, and how there are now long lists of kids needing child care while their mothers work at low-paying jobs at places like Wal-Mart. In Arizona, there is a waiting list of 11,000 kids eligible for child care. That is what passes for success in the welfare reform saga, with mothers forced off the rolls into a workplace bereft of promised child care that the cash-strapped states no longer wish to supply.

Hear, hear. For those of us who believe that what this country desperately needs is a genuine left-populism, shouldn't we be asking: Why don't we hear Democrats articulating a similarly robust critique of ongoing—and grotesquely antidemocratic—lobbying practices?

And, more to the point: instead of playing the politics of personality (and...even ickier..."character"), let's respond to Paul's views on the evils of the welfare state with real arguments. All around us, on the local, national and international levels, we can point to massive, moral, social and practical crises directly attributable to laissez faire economics and neoliberal governance. As Scheer argues, the hullabaloo about Rand Paul is nothing but a cheap distraction from the real questions:

How in the hell can humankind be expected to survive and prosper without a social safety net to protect them against the vicissitudes of a globalized and unregulated market economy? Without such a safety net, how can Western societies ever hope to fulfill their constitutional (little c and big) aspirations of freedom, justice and equality?

And, finally: If the Democratic Party can't be counted upon to take these questions at all seriously, who can?