Battelle, John. The Search. New York: Portfolio, 2005.
The author, a specialist in the field of technology and the Internet, investigates the history, inner workings, and future of search engines, focusing mainly on the world’s most popular search engine, Google. By detailing the academic and technological underpinnings and background of search engines, Battelle attempts to understand what drives search engine rankings and information selection, as well as predict how search engines will grow to be more intuitive in the future.

Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Felix. “Introduction: Rhizome.” A Thousand Plateaus.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
In this chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, the authors argue against traditional epistemology, which they associate with the structure of a central root, instead proposing as a model, a rhizomatic system, in which there is no beginning, no end, no hierarchy—only a sort of parallel relation. This view of interrelation without a necessity of seeking source or truth applies to the way Internet search engines value and rank information, not on truth value or authorship, but rather on a sophisticated algorithm used to determine degrees of relatedness.

Dennett, Daniel. Freedom Evolves. New York: Viking Penguin, 2003.
Although his identification of truth as an absolute is troubling, Dennett’s discussion of human culture and the freedom that has evolved within that culture makes an interesting parallel to the way information on the Internet goes through the process of selection. The proliferation and selection of information on the Internet is a process that has evolved, with the strongest and most repeatable “memes” winning out over sometimes more “authentic” artifacts.

Derrida, Jacques. “Signature Event Context.” Limited Inc. Evanston: Northwestern

University Press, 1988.
Derrida here asserts that language exists on the assumption and eventual necessity of absence. The implication for language is that integral to its very being is a divorce from authorial intent or truth value, as language can exist beyond and outwith the reach of an author’s intention or imagination and contains the possibility of being used disingenuously to create effect.

Landow, George. Hypertext. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
The author, a professor of New Media at Brown University, seeks to relate the technology of the Internet, specifically hypertext, to existing literary theory. Landow’s strength is in making it possible to look at the Internet in terms of how it affects reading, writing, and interpretation—the weakness of his discussion lies in its dependence on humanist principles (thanks Jillian) in dealing with a more posthuman-leaning technology.

McLuhan, Marshall, Powers, Bruce. The Global Village. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1989.
Perhaps best epitomized by the maxim “data overload equals pattern recognition,” this book examines the ways media intersects with culture, offering a method of analyzing cultural “artifacts” called “the tetrad,” which is designed to allow us to “see both figure and ground at a time when the latent effects of the mechanical age tend to obscure the ground subliminally.” In relation to the Internet, this book makes it possible to see how technological advances obsolesce and are replaced by other advances, which can help in visualizing the future of the Internet and search engines.