Neue Perspektiven wurden eröffnet, indem Spezialisten aus verschiedensten Disziplinen wie Informatik, Soziologie, Medien und Kommunikation aufeinandertrafenund sich austauschten. Das Ziel war, das Bewusstsein der Öffentlichkeit und das Wissen über gesellschaftliche und kulturelle Auswirkungen der Web-Suche zu erhöhen.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Petzold unterrichtet an der Media University Berlin im Studiengang „Medien- und Eventmanagement“. Seine Arbeits- und Forschungs-schwerpunkte liegen v. a. in den Bereichen Medienmanagement Innovation und soziale Technologien. Am 07. November 2013 hielt er auf der Society of the Query einen Vortrag mit dem Titel: „The Search Industry’s Five Percent Gamble“. Hier ein Ausschnitt seines Talks:
„To support five per cent of the world’s languages suffices to reach the majority of the world’s population. This is the five per cent gamble made by the digital technology industry on global information and knowledge markets. Take Google Search as an example: although it is offered in a wide range of languages, more than ninety-five per cent of the world’s languages remain unsupported. A considerable gap remains, which is at best only partially addressed by the industry. Because of the investment costs needed in language support, the five per cent gamble is the direct outcome of the Return on Investment calculated by the industry in the overall context of internationalization and localization. The internationalization process makes sure that a piece of software is built language-neutral (and thus not biased towards any specific language), and the localization process then allows for different kinds of language and region support to be implemented. Recognizing the achievements in this domain, the five per cent gamble marks an important step towards making information and knowledge searchable and available for people.”