Those who know me well often joke that I?d make a good spokesperson for a Google ad. I can?t help it if Google has changed my life. The Google desktop app has saved my writing life more times than I care to mention, and Google calendar is the means by which my husband and I can always convince each other to attend otherwise resisted events (?Oh, you couldn?t make it? Your Google calendar said you were free!?)
So my curiosity was piqued by Siva Vaidhyanathan?s [forthcoming] book, The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce and Community, and Why We Should Worry [hyperlink].
Vidhyanathan is a media scholar whose two previous books, Copyrights and Copywrongs and The Anarchist in the Library, have met with wide praise. He approaches his new book as both a fan and critic, ?I am in awe of all that Google has done and hopes to do. I am also wary of its ambition and power.? In a talk at Penn State, he used the example of a Google search for the word ?Siva? (the # 1 result is the Smashing Pumpkins 1991 music video for ?Siva?) to question just how universal Google actually is.
?This gives us some indication [of] the Google universe,? [he writes], ?Google actually has a pretty profound and perhaps disturbing role in what we consider to be valuable, true and important. Millions of people use Google everyday. We are not Google?s consumers; we are Google?s products… Google knows everything about many of us and a lot about almost all of us. Google knows your interests, your passions, maybe your fetishes.?
Vaidhyanathan points to Google?s official mission statement: ?To organize the world?s information and make it universally accessible.? It?s a stunning statement, he says, ?But it?s the universality we have to question.?
?Sepia Mutiny
http://www.sepiamutiny.com