‘Google is nice,but we need something better’

Latour’s tour began with a visit to IIT Delhi’s Bharti Building,where he interacted with a group of computer engineers. Seeking possible collaborations in his projects,Latour said he was looking for persons who could help develop projects that would make web-based data accessible to everybody.

“We are fishing. We are trying to find tools to help people — engineers,scientists,politicians and citizens in manipulating datascapes. These datascapes existed in newspapers before,but all of that is on the web (now). These datascapes are extremely difficult to navigate through,and citizens do not have easy access to them,” he said.

He said though the Internet revolution may have laid bare vast quantities of data,it is still inaccessible to the common man. Google,according to Latour,is “nice but just a list”.

“We are not very satisfied with the Google interface,which is convenient,but is just a list. It is not a datascape — it is just a list of page rankings,and I am sure we can have better. We are into merging some elements of a newspaper and various kinds of ideas into a search engine,” he said.

Latour — through his talk — provided a glimpse into what he and his team are trying to achieve. “The question is,how are we going to fuse the kind of information that is there on a search engine and Twitter with the hierarchy of the information on the screen in order to regain the elements that the newspaper was giving you. We want to make a distinction between authoritative and non-authoritative sources,because today,Google’s page-ranking is based on popularity. We are trying to find out how to detect authority out of popularity,” he said.

However,Latour said it is not India but the Western world that is in need of a solution. “The idea,really,is to reinvent the newspaper. Newspapers in India are doing very well – but,if you take newspapers everywhere else,they are in trouble. Yet,the function of the newspaper,which is to be non-partisan on the public sphere,is as important now as it was in the past. There is a link between newspapers and democracy. There should be a link between the web and democracy,” he said.

Admitting he is no expert on the topic,Latour said there is an urgent need to help users identify correct search results. And the fact that the web tells users what she or he wants to hear does not help in the least.

“Because of the web,we can be more enclosed,more separated,than when we had newspapers. Now,if you live only on the web,you will never meet a contradictory site. That is very troubling. This is why an interface between digital technicians and social sciences is so important,” he said.

Even though he is an influential figure in the field of science and technology,Latour said that he needs a team of individuals working with him to keep up with the changing times. “I am left out (by new technology)! This is science… we need a laboratory,we need a team… this is collective work,” he said.

He also spoke on why he is not a member of various online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. How people interact with each other is central to Latour’s work. “I am interested in how the web – the digital world – responds to the classical questions of political sciences,anthropology and sociology. I would not hype the digital technique. They are very traditional – chatting,sending messages…. Twitter is very traditional. You disseminate little bits of messages. This is what people have done in villages for years,for centuries. Now,they are accessible. It is the scale that is new,” he said.