When search engines stopped being human: Menu interfaces and the rise of the ideological nature of algorithmic search

Abstract

Algorithmic search is entangled with a positivist ideology biased towards the assumption that neutrality can only be provided when search is performed by computational processes while shielded from human agencies. This article critically examines the ideological nature of algorithmic search, by showing how, between the mid-1970s and late-1980s, long before the birth of algorithmic search by search engines in the 1990s, a transformation from human interfaces to menu interfaces in online search helped encourage and normalise algorithmic ideology at the expense of a more humanistic ideology of search connected to library traditions. Based on a study of a broad corpus of archival materials in which online search appeared as a central object of description and discussion, it argues that the rise of menu interfaces in the 1980s encouraged the positivist nature of algorithmic search by decoupling a democratic service function at the front-end from the editorial function in the back-end, and by discouraging the use of human selection power and intellectual labour in the search process.