TY - JOUR AU - Rieder, Bernhard PY - 2005/06/01 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Networked Control: Search Engines and the Symmetry of Confidence JF - The International Review of Information Ethics JA - IRIE VL - 3 IS - 0 SE - Article DO - 10.29173/irie346 UR - https://informationethics.ca/index.php/irie/article/view/346 SP - 26-32 AB - Search engines have become an integral part of our Internet use. They shape the way we look at the world, they provide orientation where there is none; but the maps they draw are too often hijacked by commercial interest. Search engines are less black box than black foam; functional decoupling, parasite technologies, and the embedding in the greater context of culture and society render the search act subject to overdetermination. Control is thus diluted into a dense network of human and non-human “actants” and the power of the search engine is located in a control zone rather than a control center. In order to shift power back to the public, this paper proposes the concept of “symmetry of confidence”, a new relationship between search engine companies and their users. ER -