The Viagra Files: The Web as Anticipatory Medium

Exposing Viagra For What It ‘Is’

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We shall not rehearse claims about the Internet and the Web as an overall renegade space. (Those Internet days are numbered.) Rather, we shall attempt to look into the interaction between subspaces, between spaces of the palpably non-author- itative, and the palpably authoritative. We do so with a knowledge search exercise— in the style of the old travellers now with collaborative filtering collection and evaluation techniques—and enquire into which subspaces come to play the part of the overall authoritative sources, according to the findings and keepings of a group of ‘surfer-experts’. The ‘search for information and knowledge’ exercises described here, and the ideas for the knowledge instrumentation below, were conducted with 10 advanced students at the University of Vienna in October 2000, and again with 25 advanced students at the University of Amsterdam in April 2001. The focus groups of students were invited to ‘travel’, ‘surf’ and ‘forage’ for information and knowledge on the Internet, i.e. find and determine what is known about a given subject that would provide answers to particular questions. Upon conclusion of the exercise, the groups were then invited to explain their ‘search for information and knowledge’ strategies, i.e. how they came to know about the subject, in this case a new drug— Viagra. Thus, initially, we are interested in the groups’ knowledge acquisition technique, for, beyond that of mere travellers, we would like to ensure their expert status. The ‘advanced-ness’ of the students, noted above, derives from their self- descriptions as ‘webby’, meaning their experience-based capacity to forage and their alleged grasp of different foraging methods. We also briefly tested (or, in fact, hardened) this claim with a search engine tinkering sub-exercise, whereby the groups were invited to compare the same queries across three distinct engines, and devise a means (usually analogies) to describe the different engine logics to a layperson. (So we attempted to create a lay–expert divide, and make them into experts, at least briefly.) This sub-exercise also provided the groups with a vocabulary to provide a rationale for their search strategy (and, as it turned out, their ‘favourite engine’), as we come to below. What were they after? The lead questions were: What is Viagra, and whom is it for? Viagra was chosen as a subject matter because it is, in some sense, a special Internet phenomenon—a (mail order) prescription drug that is available via the Internet (click and buy) without face-to-face consultation with a physician. The drug’s ‘net flavour’ has more features, too. Beyond the new online medical and e-commercial elements, it could be associated with two leading (underground) areas of the net: ‘pornography’ or sex (Viagra may be thought of as a ‘sex drug’) and ‘piracy’ (Viagra may be had through quasi-legal, unregulated channels).