At the risk of being immodest, in my opinion our very own Oxford Internet Institute is currently the only other institution with any claim to really focus explicitly on the social aspects of the Internet and does so with a strong academic track record. In short, there is certainly still a lot of space for institutions with a comparable focus and now just last week Google’s Eric Schmidt has announced that Google is founding and more importantly funding the “Institute for Internet & Society” in Berlin. Its still early stages and details are scarce but Google promises to take a substantial amount of money in their hands to create an independent research institute that focuses on

1. innovation and online economy
2. Internet governance and policy
3. legal aspects of Internet and society

Rumours are that they have a number of strong academic partners lined up (including Berlin universities and research centres) so if this turns out to be a real and long-term effort it could be really exciting. In particular it could provide Germany with a high-profile research base where people who are interested in these issues can come together, such as the OII provides for the UK and beyond. While in Germany there is a lot of research on the social and legal implications of the Internet going on (see my list here), such a central gathering place for  information and exchange as well as research is still very much lacking.

PS: Some more information is available in an article by Eric Schmidt for German newspaper “Berliner Morgenpost” (in German)

UPDATE: I have been criticised for being overly dismissive about other research centres on the Internet and Society and rightly so. There are of course a significant number of others institutions with a similar focus. A first overview (though a bit dated) offers a list by OII director Bill Dutton here. However, to provide some perspective to my statement, I was referring to i) independent departments or institutes (not a research group within one) who ii) focus exclusively on the Internet and Society (and not more generally into Information or Technology or else), have iii) a strong academic track record and iv) achieved some status of being known. I would still maintain that not many other institutions have a claim to all that but this was of course not to imply that no brilliant and even better research is being done elsewhere

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Now of course it will be immediately obvious to most people that this is simply wrong and I refrain myself from giving more counterarguments than political activists in autocratic regimes and the type of privacy most sane people prefer for going to the toilet.

What makes this statement more than a mere nuisance but outright dangerous is that it was made by Eric Schmidt who is the CEO of Google, in an interview with CNBC on 3 December 2009. There has been an outcry already and I refer everyone to the brief and eloquent response by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The statement of Mr. Google does nothing to alleviate the fears about privacy intrusion by Google through its ever more pervasive technology and vast data retention*. I still don’t believe in any conspiracy plot by Google to take over the world – rather it is something much more dangerous: It is utter naivity and ignorance about the complexities of human society and a purely technocratic approach to life.

I believe there is only one way to help Eric Schmidt to realise the value of privacy – that is to take it away from him. Let us help Eric to come clear about what he has done and add Sunlight (as the best disinfectant)** to his life by making it public. For example, I want to know where Eric Schmidt lives. Exactly. What car he uses to get to work. When. On which route. What stuff he loves. What nightmares he has. Everything. Let’s make a crowd-sourcing effort and publish all of this on the web. Again and again. Until Mr. Schmidt starts to realize the value of privacy.

There is only one trouble with this: Eric Schmidt already knows the value of privacy. For himself at least. For when in 2005 CNet published this story with some details on the private Eric Schmidt (with data that was obtained by public Google searches only) he acted very quickly and banned Google interviews with CNet reporters for the duration of one year.

So let us call this what it is: Hypocrisy. And this is evil, Mr. Schmidt.

Maybe it is time for a CEO to step down from his position when he is severely violating his company’s code of conduct:

“Don’t be evil.” [...] But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally — following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect. [...] It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct.

[...]

Who Must Follow Our Code?

We expect all of our employees and Board members to know and follow the Code. Failure to do so can result in disciplinary action, including termination of employment.

Shareholders of Google, you know what to do to prevent further damage for your company. But then I see this Reuters article from February this year:

And some say Google is inherently unreceptive to investor input. Its dual-class share structure gave three individuals — co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt — 67 percent of voting rights as of 2008.

Time to change this too!

** On the issue of the sometimes questionable value of transparency see this very recommendable piece by Lawrence Lessig.

I have been thinking of a way to test whether the blogosphere really does constitute a counter public. I have developed a tool that compares the media agenda – that is a ranking of stories reported within 24 hours – to the blogging agenda and measures the overlap between the two. The main objective is to find out whether bloggers are applying different criteria to rank the importance (salience) of a news story than traditional journalists.

My paper describes it in more detail but basically I construct the agenda from the stories on Google News, extract the key words for each story with the Yahoo Term Extractor and search with the help of Google Blog Search how many posts cover this story. You can have a look at the data on this website but you will realise that data collection stopped some time ago.

In due course there will be an update of the tool along with the paper that will improve the data reliability but for now I very much welcome your feedback on it!

There is only one drawback: The second search result on Google is already our report evaluating Directgov and other government websites for the third Government on the Internet report for the National Audit Office. For this report we let people search the Internet to find out the meaning of this tax code. Given our Google karma (or the lack of other relevant sites) I suppose we should have included the answer in our report

However, as always the US government is ready to put some money to a “good cause” and found a rather imaginative solution to this problem: buying adlinks on Google. Try yourself or have a look at the screenshot, one of the adlinks for a “war in iraq” search points to “The official site of the Multi-National Force – Iraq” with loads of good news from the troops on the ground.

I am not sure what surprises me more: the very fact that the US government is actually spending money on Google adlinks at all or that they actually managed to figure out that there is a potential problem and addressed it rather smartly…