Welcome to the Google-Borg
posted by Greg Lastowka
USAToday.com is running a banner headline today for an article: “Google becoming an auxiliary brain.” Here’s the article, and here’s the thesis of the reporter, Elizabeth Weise:
If we are the sum total of our knowledge and experiences, then the Internet is a collection of other people’s knowledge and experiences. And Google — so ubiquitous that it has become its own verb — allows us to tap into that collection.
I generally enjoyed reading this, and it’s way too easy to nitpick USA Today, but here are a few reactions:
1) It’s a pretty clear example of the cyborg trope isn’t it? Google isn’t billed as just a novel information source, like a television, it’s billed as a “brain” — a technological extension of human biology. And like the brain of the Star Trek Borg, it is a collective mind we now share. This collective brain-sharing is billed not as scary, but nifty.
2) Despite the excerpt above, if you read this, Google appears to be getting a great deal of credit for the Web itself. Throughout, Weise’s language makes this an article about Google as information repository, not as search provider. To be clear: Larry, Serge, and company built a great search tool that helps you find information that other people put on the Web (and one that hands you an advertisement along the way).
3) In somewhat of a contradiction, it appears that people who provide information on the Web are not to be trusted. Weise quotes a research librarian from Georgia:
And even when malicious intent isn’t the problem, mastery of a subject can be, says Jacobson. “The opinions that get heard are from people who have a lot of time to create websites, not necessarily the people with the best information.”
Can’t trust those people who have time to create websites, can you? Oh wait — isn’t that the definition of my Googlebrain? What is curious is that the answer seems to be no, because this comment doesn’t follow the discussion of Google, but… Wikipedia. So Wikipedia is less trustworthy than the Web (aka “Google”)? Oh well.
Further reading: Danah Boyd on the Seigenthaler fuss.
December 19, 2005 at 10:44 am
Posted in: Google & Search Engines, Wiki
Print This Post
Responses (1)
robhyndman.com - December 19, 2005 at 4:04 pm
The Google-Borg
Greg Lastowka writes at Concurring Opinions about why Google is like the Borg, from the perspective of being an auxiliary brain. Interesting enough, but I thought its assimilative nature in tech M&A, particularly in light of recent events that su…
Leave a Reply