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...I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him... Mark Antony |
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It appears that Google and I have a few things in common. Firstly, we both become began our foray into the Internet in the same year (1998) and we both saw the Internet as a remarkably exciting concept that could revolutionise the way humans live their lives. But that's about where our commonalities ended. Google for its part saw the huge commercial prospects that could be mined from this burgeoning phenomenon. I for mine, was thoroughly excited by the prospects that technology could return to individual human beings the social leverage that we enjoyed as cave dwellers, without actually having to go back and live in a cave... Some 3,000 years of evolutionary technology has resulted in the steadily growing concentration of power, over the daily lives of individuals, more and more into the hands of selected casts, groups or individuals by either providing the ability to build assets which could be used to purchase power or the provision of instruments with which to enforce it. By the end of the 20th century this evolutionary reprocess was well advanced and the corridors of power well established. The capital reserves of the powerful were vast by earlier standards and the technology instrument's capabilities were enormous. In the absence of access to the benefits bestowed by technology, a single individual was an obscure, meaningless blip. The control of information is the number one tool in the toolbox of those seeking to exercise power over others. One of the earliest examples that beautifully demonstrates this application is the rise of the Masons with its roots back in time to when man first used technology to manipulate building materials and how the control of information, relevant to that skill, insured that a select cast enjoyed an elevated standard of living. Governments, universities, religions, and corporations which had for countless centuries been the gatekeeper of the process by which people accessed information were suddenly faced with a situation where they could lose total control over, not just the process by which individual acquired information but its content as well. Like the sudden arrival of an asteroid, this technological glitch promised the dawn of a new age which metaphorically could tear down the paddock fences allowing the sheep and cattle to wander where they will, as they had done thousands of years ago before domestication and for a few brief moments, as has often been the case throughout history, humanity stood on the cusp of an exciting new age. Alas however farmer Brown had seen the fences fall and in the application of a tried and true formula moves to re-establish the fence and controlled the gate - Google went corporate. Not for one minute however am I suggesting that Google should be blamed for inventing the greed gene and all the implications that flow from its existence. I am not even suggesting that the greed gene is of itself an evil piece of molecular sculpturing - not in the slightest, without the evolution of this little piece of molecular marvel it would not have been possible for organisms to have survived the long winter periods when sustenance was so scarce and it certainly is not beneficial to have evolved those glorious fat cell for the storage of condensed energy without the companion gene to drive the organism to utilize this capacity when suitable conditions are rife. No, Google is not guilty of that failing, but you see the underlying flaw, unfortunately for human beings - Googleist included, in the evolutionary design for our species was the development of the opposing thumb, without sufficiently extended neuron development, necessary to ameliorate the effects of the removal of external environmental control that would flow from the use of tools. There is no better way of paraphrasing the situation than to regurgitate a common bit of oratory my grandfather would use often in admonishing my often mistake “..your trouble is, Mr. Smartypants that you're just smart enough to get yourself into trouble but not smart enough to get yourself out” So there you have it. Google simply following the course set by evolution robed itself in the skin of a border Collie and promptly set about rounding up all the sheep, putting them back inside the fence and was the gatekeeper for those to be allowed through the gate. I don't hold the view however that this would not have happened if Google had never arrived. As surely as gravity attracts, another entity would have risen from the heap, be it Smoogle, Waggle, Pukkgle or any other appealing piece of literary architecture designed to capture the attention and imagination of the masses and funded with adequate liquidity nutrients to ensure its survival through the embryonic stage. So where does that leave us now? Well Google pretty much controls what of the readly available information, you will have access to. We already know if you have a website on which there is information, unless that website appears on the front page of a Google search your prospects are significantly restricted in the way that many people will ever find it. Social networking sites are an interesting development within the internet and whether or not they ever rise to a position where they represent a real alternative to the way we access that vast amount of available information, is still in doubt.[20 April 2005]
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