Google, Words beyond Grammar

Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2012 — 36 p. — (100 Notes - 100 Thoughts/100 Notizen - 100 Gedanken) — ISBN-10: 3775728953; ISBN-13: 978-3775728959.For the philosopher and media theoretician Boris Groys, Google performs the function of philosophy and religion as a ubiquitous means of negotiating the world. Philosophical precursors for Google's dissemination of discourses and the emancipation of words from grammar include Plato, Saussure and Derrida; another analogy is the twentieth-century avant-garde's production of 'word clouds' severed from their context, as found in the Conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s. Groys identifies this tradition as "the struggle for a utopian ideal of the free flow of information-the free migration of liberated words through the totality of social space."