With billions of queries serviced every day, web search has profoundly reshaped the way we relate to information. But search has itself been reshaped by law, regulation, markets, user interactions, and other social forces. This panel asks: how can we understand the historical evolution of search from a social perspective? What has search done to us, and what have we done to search? And how can future search systems be designed to avoid some of the mistakes made in the past?

Speakers,

Assoc Prof Ramon Lobato, RMIT University (chair)

Louisa Bartolo, Queensland University of Technology

Prof Dan Angus, Queensland University of Technology

Prof Kimberlee Weatherall, University of Sydney

Prof Alistair Moffat, University of Melbourne