Erik Borra on Mon, 20 Nov 2006 18:31:18 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime-ann> open search (Modified by Geert Lovink) 

.
   (please circulate, apologies for multiple copies)

Open-search kick-off workshop

   Who controls the information on the internet? While the internet
itself is an open medium, getting access to the information is mostly
controlled by search engines, operated by large multi-national companies
such as google and microsoft. These companies have one primary goal:
monetary profit. If this entails manipulating search results, censorship
or disclosing user profiles to governments, they have no reason not to
do so.

   All of these problems stem from the fact that these search engines
operate as centralized entities. We want to remedy this situation by
creating a distributed, peer-to-peer (p2p) search engine. This new
approach distributes the crawling agents over users' computers. Crawled
data is indexed and stored in a distributed and redundant
manner, to avoid single-point-of-failure and manipulation. Search
queries are processed anonymously by the network, leaving no central log
of whom searches for what.

This project is part of and funded by [1]the digital pioneers programme.

   The kick-off workshop will start with an introduction to the project,
and its political and ideological underpinnings. The second half will
revolve around the technology needed to create such a distributed search
engine. The results of this brainstorm session will form the input for a
paid developer, who will describe the architecture and subsequently
start to implement it. Follow-up workshops are already being planned.

   We encourage everyone interested to take part in this workshop,
either virtually or in person. This is a community project, a search
engine by and for the people, not by the powers-that-be. See [2]our
website for more details, including how to get involved, chat with us or
sign up to the mailing lists.

Time & Place

Tuesday 12-12-2006, 19h CET, 18h GMT, 13h EST, 20h EET, 8h HST, 11h MST

   Virtual attendance:

   The workshop can be attended in virtual form by audio/video stream
and interaction through IRC chat via [3]KickOffWorkshopVirtualAttendance

   Physical attendance:

   University of Amsterdam
   Turfdraagsterpad 9
   1012 XT Amsterdam
   The Netherlands

   There will be sandwiches (free of charge). Soft-drinks and coffee
available from vending machines.

Program

    1. Introductory talks
       + [4]Joris van Hoboken on regulation by/in/on searchengines.
       + [5]Michel Bauwens ([6]p2p foundation) on p2p epistemologies in
       relation to searching.
    2. Introduction of our project
    3. Brainstorm about political impact, ideology, etc...
    4. break
    5. Brainstorm information architecture

References

1. http://www.digitalpioneers.org/
2. http://www.open-search.net/
3.
https://twiki.sonologic.nl/twiki/bin/view/Opensearch/ KickOffWorkshopVirtualAttendance
4. http://www.ivir.nl/medewerkers/vanhoboken.html
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Bauwens
6. http://www.p2pfoundation.net/

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