You often express the opinion that the role of the internet in economic development is potentially as important as it is in education. You are also, however, concerned about its cultural and political impact. Are there any other philosophers with whom you share these views?

Among the many philosophers who have written books on the topic, pride of place should perhaps be given to Barbara Cassin. Last year, she published a book called Google-me America's Second Mission. (The 'first' mission, in Cassin's eyes, is now being carried out most clearly in Iraq).

Cassin is one of the leading French specialists on Ancient Greek and especially Sophist thought. She turned her attention to Google for two reasons. On the one hand, she is sure that Google is the best-performing search engine on the Web; on the other hand, she was alarmed when she heard the representative of Google-Europe proclaim that: "Our mission is to organise all the information in the world."

This claim was, in the first place, plainly a case of concealing the pursuit of commercial interests under the cover of a civilising mission. The primacy of the business dimension (not bad in itself) is obvious from such facts as that when you click, you tend to get adverts or so-called pop-ups, related to the subject.

However, Cassin was perturbed by Google's self-given mission not so much for this reason as for two others that are bound to disturb the conscience of any philosopher.

The first is that Google has a search system that carries with it an implied and poor theory of what knowledge is. To launch a search using Google you type in one or more keywords. This is the only way of access to the information that Google makes available. Knowledge is atomised with the keywords functioning as indexes to isolated nuggets of information.

Google's exclusive and universal language has neither syntax (ways that show the different possible kinds of interrelationship between different items of knowledge) nor style (ways in which authors express their ideas in a manner that is either personal or expressive of a group sharing a world vision or of a school of thought).

The information that Google makes available is therefore essentially structure-less. All items of information appear to be of equal value except in terms of their popularity indicated by the number of clicks or requests for each item. Cassin concludes: "The keywords language allows quality to be fashioned from nothing but quantity."

The second reason for the philosopher's worries about the claim that it is to 'all the information in the world' that Google guides us is the following: almost all the indexed information is in American English...

Are there not also available interfaces in most languages?

Indeed there are. Marketing requires it; otherwise clients whose native language is not American English would not feel at home. Nevertheless, Google itself calls these offerings in languages other than US English 'flavours', that is, they are regarded as spices added to the only main dish. Moreover, the automatic translations provided by Google are often as comical in their results as the famous first efforts made at translating EU regulations into Maltese.

This exclusive access to information by way of American English is a denial of the now generally upheld belief that a language expresses a way of life and different languages are needed to express different cultures.

The Google search-engine's claim that it is the way of access to 'all the information in the world' implies assuming the truth of the view that there is only one valid or supreme way of life or world vision for all of humankind.

This presumption contradicts the deep conviction of most philosophers that a plurality of cultures enhances the knowledge of mankind as a whole. Much more of the fullness of truth is made accessible through the use of a plurality of languages. In fact I have myself often had experience of the fact that there are some things that you can say only in Maltese or in English or in French or in some one other language, but not in the rest of them.

How do other search-engines compare with Google?

All the other big ones with which Cassin or myself are familiar are less good, but no less American. Moreover, a European engine called Quaero is in the process of being set up, but it is not any different from Google in its limitations from the point of view of open access to all information.

In her book Cassin appeals for the creation of a tool based on some other and more complex type of data structuring, or indeed including several different types of such structuring. Moreover, these desired search-engines would allow users to explore the plurality of cultures in the world through a variety of languages. Such a different search-engine would in fact enable information searches to become inventive and creative.

Several reviewers of Cassin's book have judged it to be utopian. But I was disappointed when, in response to Google's project to digitalise the world's literary heritage, Malta was not among the six EU member states (France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy and Hungary) that promoted the setting up by the EU of a digitalised European library. This EU vs Google contest was described in the press as Victor Hugo vs Harry Potter.

Could it be, on the one hand, that the Maltese civil servant in charge of the matter was a Harry Potter fan and maybe had never heard of Victor Hugo? On the other hand would not a Maltese contribution in the direction indicated by Cassin really and clearly find us a singular placement in cyberspace?

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Nicole Bugeja.