Far and wide the claim can be heard that the WWW has become the Wild, Wild West. The analogy between the Internet and a rugged place full of entrepreneurial frontiersmen refers to the unprecedented possibilities for discovery, adventure and excitement on offer. It seems to me, however, that the use of the term Wild West is more appropriately understood as a reference to the screaming voices of the astounding number and variety of people who are touting their opinions and knowledge about the importance of the Internet. To apply the Wild West metaphor, it is not only the country sheriff who is occupied by the small town murder. The whole country, with its entire police force, governmental institutions, intellectual and scientific communities, and opiniated citizenry, is involved. To put it bluntly, everyone is talking about the Net like crazy.

The recently held Symposium at De Waag in Amsterdam confirms this once more. The enticing title was “Preferred Placement: The hit economy, hyperlink diplomacy and web epistemology.” The speakers included computer scientists, programmers, computer technicians, communication scientists, journalists, sociologists and the odd philosopher. Sitting through a day filled with the diverging presentations that the symposium offered truly was an exciting, freak-like show, in a nice sort of way. The Jan van Eyck Academy, the event organisers, lived up to the expectations by offering a variety of speakers, combining critical, theoretical viewpoints and visual, practical approaches to a subject matter that is undeniably bothering us all. Preferred placement, as the title of the symposium indicates, is an important issue that affects the ways we navigate the Net, which information we find, who controls that information and how valuable and trustworthy that information is. In a sense, therefore, the practice of preferred placement influences the reliability of Net information retrieval and our Web presence.

Preferred placement refers to a shortly lived practice of a search engine (AltaVista) selling key words to companies that wanted their URLs returned when certain terms were queried. After much criticism, Alta Vista cancelled the service. Goto.com’s search engine still uses, openly this time, the “bid-for-placement” technique. The preferred placement incident raises some questions about the workings of the Web. First, the reliability and objectivity of search engines becomes uncertain. How trustworthy are the sites, presented to us in search engine results, if they derive not from algorithm but from commerce? Secondly, the apparent desire for preferred placement in the industry raises questions about the significance of Web presence more generally, and how it could be determined according to different logics. Nowadays, organisations achieve “presence” by virtue of their appearance in search engine results, but also on portals, and other web sites, through links made to them. How is this presence to be analysed and defined?

These issues refer to a more general concern that is raised by preferred placement, namely the quality and reliability of Web information with “presence”. The “hit economy”, as the symposium calls it, has put into place notions of relevance synonomous with popularity; organisations assert that hit counts shows the popularity and thus relevence of their sites. Another way to consider relevance is through an understanding of “hyperlink diplomacy”, organisations referring to each other, and thus establishing networks. Appearance in one of these networks, organised around knowledge themes, would amount to another kind of presence, perhaps a more relevant and reliable indicator of meaninful presence. The notion of “Web epistemology”, one of the main concerns of the symposium, opens the discussion surrounding new practices and understandings of web presence; it looks into ways in which knowledge is being gained on and from the Net by “reading between the links”.

The issue of web epistemology was taken up by a number of speakers during the day, in very different ways. The early morning appeared to be reserved for the charismatic and polemic speeches of two London intellectuals. Nick Durrant of MetaDesign (London) was supposed to present us with a reasonable defense of the hit economy, but he spent most of the time discussing the downsides of the Internet - the messy space it inevitably is, the meaningless metaphors that are attached to it, and the sorry state of most sites. His defence of the hit economy came down to an apology (and an implicit invitation). It has only existed for ten years and it has been designed by 25 year-olds in the Silicon Valley. Durrant’s ideas of the Web as a media space or market place were then taken up by Korinna Patelis (Goldsmiths College) who argued against the use of market place and naturalistic metaphors for the Internet. The Internet is increasingly being promoted as a place of direct exchange, with the middleman cut out. The idea is flawed because it underestimates the importance of mediation and the structured experience. On-line navigating is inevitably structured by software, search engines, Internet service providers, etc. - contrary to what the market place model of direct exchange implies.

The second part of the morning was dedicated to more practical stories on mapping and path tracing, presenting us with programmes that help us navigate and understand the Web. Martin Dodge (University College London) showed different sorts of maps and their use for the individual navigator. Individual site maps offer an overview of a single site, and web maps indicate the various elements of a search result. The most interesting maps, however, seem to be the “dynamic surf maps” that follow you around the Web and offer a graphical representation of the places you have been. This makes navigating through the Web, especially when using many hyperlinks, more understandable and less disorienting for the individual user. It is makes the surfer’s path an object of study. Matthew Chalmers (University of Glasgow) mentioned the problems connected with this kind of mapping. First of all, it is difficult to find a logical and illuminating structure in the content of information - an issue that seems to be most pressing with individual site maps. The second difficulty is finding forms of representation that are in accordance with our perception; maps should be nice to look at, and appear to give a logical representation of the information structure. A third problem is posed by the complexity of the Web itself. It is difficult to make sense of its structure and the paths made by hyperlinks and taken by surfers. Another downside of mapping seems to be the increased possibilities for tracking - an issue that Matthew Chalmers addressed after discussing his Recer (or “recommender”) navigation tool. Recer traces the path of the surfer while taking into account subjectivity and context. Paths, like maps, can be a useful tool for the surfer visiting extensive numbers of sites. But they can also be useful for marketeers tracking and monitoring the consumer. This possible threat opened the way to a more theoretical discussion of the issues of privacy and freedom on the Net. Internet bookstore Amazon already makes use of paths when recommending books to an individual buyer. Limitations of privacy and freedom of choice are, according to Chalmers, therefore often the downsides of good marketing and quality service. In the privacy debate, there should thus be an evaluation of the pros and cons of privacy protection to determine what we deem more important: protection of privacy or utility. The same choice has to be made between marketing and service.

The Jan van Eyck Academy presented some of its views in the early afternoon, introducing Richard Rogers, Noortje Marres, Stephanie Hankey, Ian Morris and Alex Bruce Wilkie as theorists and designers. The theoretical perspectives focused on the several issues posed by the symposium programme: strategy, authority and power relations influencing Web reliability and objectivity. The practice of rogue sites amusingly illustrates these issues. Rogue sites try to look as real as possible, imitating the style of the person or institution they attack. “Fudging” (making small and easily overlooked changes in URLs) enables rogues to lure innocent surfers into their sites, and thus to introduce them to their ideas. Search engines are often unable to discern between “real” sites and the rogue ones, which results in uncertain and unreliable information and epistemology. As a counter-attack American businesses now buy up URLs and metatags as brand names to prevent rogues from using them. However, the ‘look and feel’ of sites are difficult to protect - and often easy to copy for rogues. The “de-pluralising engine” that the Academy has designed offers a visual link language that shows how authority and reliability on the Web can be authored. The engine shows a graphical model of voices with different authoritative stance in various discourses - thus illuminating the power structures and actors within a social debate, like the issues connected with genetically manipulated food. Issues surrounding public discourse were taken up by the next speaker, Michael Murtaugh. He presented a ‘public debate engine’ used as an input device for policy-making, and other projects that help public dialogue that he has designed at newMetropolis Science & Technology Center (Amsterdam) and with his company, Jam! New Media for Public Dialog.

As the day drew to a close, there was more room for theoretical debate. Journalist Gerald Wagner (Berlin) commented on the social theory that has been formed around the Internet over the past decades. The link epistemology that had been an important subject of the day’s discussion is according to Wagner the most important breakthrough in communication theories of Internet. But this still raises the question what the social importance and advantages of Internet research amount to. Steve Woolgar (Brunel University) addressed this question from another perspective, focusing on the challenges that the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) pose to social theory. The new ICTs may force us to rethink some of the traditional and accepted topics of social theory. The Virtual Society? Programme that Woolgar is working on in the UK shows some of the new themes put forward by ICT.

Woolgar’s talk was an appropriate way to finish off a day that had seen discussions of a variety of contemporary themes, both theoretical and practical. And to be fair, it was a good deal of sensible talk - nothing like the drunken boasting or the silly cowboy songs of the Wild West.

Author’s address: L.dubbeld@wmw.utwente.nl