Renée Ridgway

Getting off Google

The research fellowship Getting off Google addresses the future of search through three lenses: testing out alternative ‘privacy’ search engines, visualising Google’s data ecosystem and exploring the potentials of natural language query and AI with a personal assistant. Alternative ‘privacy search engines’ state that they don’t collect or store data on users. If data thus is not a currency or an exchange for free services, what are their business models?

Main Research Topics

• Search Engines
• Google
• Data
• AI
• PA

Curriculum Vitae

• Renée Ridgway is a researcher, educator and artist based in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
• In 2014 Ridgway embarked on a PhD at Copenhagen Business School in their Management, Philosophy and Politics department and Leuphana University’s Digital Cultures Research Lab (DCRL). Her current research investigates the technological, organisational and behavioural implications of ‘search’ in digital societies along with issues of dataveillance, anonymity and privacy.
• Since 2008 Ridgway is the co-initiator of and contributor to n.e.w.s., a collective platform for participatory development of artistic and curatorial projects in contemporary art and new media.
• Ridgway was a core tutor at the DAI (Dutch Art Institute) ArtEZ Masters from 2009-2014 with Negotiating Equity and Roaming Academy.
• Ridgway is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA) and Piet Zwart Institute/Plymouth University (MA).

Lectures

• Ridgway, R. (2018). From Surveillance Capitalism to Black Utopia, 34^th EGOS (European Group for Organization Studies) Colloquium 2018, Estonian Business School (EBS), Tallinn (Estonia).
• Ridgway, R. (2018). The Autonomous Surfer, Freeport 0 – Share Lab: Trespassing the data factory, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Barcelona (Spain).
• Ridgway, R. (2018). Data Visualisations as Transcription, Politics of the Machines – Art and After, Aalborg University, Copenhagen (Denmark).

Publications

• Ridgway, R. (2018). Search Engines. The Oxford Handbook of Media, Technology, and Organization Studies. Oxford Press. Book chapter. (forthcoming)
• Ridgway, R. (2018). Search Engines. The SAGE Encyclopeadia of the Internet. Barney Warf. Editor. Entry. (forthcoming)
• Ridgway, R. (2018). Who’s Hacking Whom, Limn: Issue 8: Hacks, Leaks, and Breaches.
• Ridgway, R. (2017). Against a Personalisation of the Self, Ephemera: Theory & politics in organization, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2017, p. 377-397.
• Ridgway, R. (2015). Crowdfunding the Commons? In Geert Lovink; Nathaniel Tkacz; Patricia De Vries (Eds.). Moneylab Reader: An Intervention in Digital Economy. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures 2015, p. 281-294.
• Ridgway, R. (2015). Personalisation as Currency. APRA: A Peer-Reviewed Journal About, Vol. 4, No. 1.
• Ridgway, R. (2013). Crowdfunding: Monetizing the Crowd? In Tatiana Bazzichelli; Geoff Cox (Eds.). Disrupting Business: Art and Activism in Times of Financial Crisis. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, p. 153-171 (DATA Browser, No. 05).