Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
For some reason, this morning I wound up reading this article about Google, published six years ago in the London Review of Books. John Lanchester concludes--and remember, this was in 2006:
Putting all this together, we reach the conclusion that, on the one hand, Google is cool. On the other hand, Google has the potential to destroy the publishing industry, the newspaper business, high street retailing and our privacy.
And, why, goodness--that's just what it did! If I'd really grasped this, I probably would have spent the past six years differently.
The best historical analogy for where Google is today probably comes from the time when the railroads were being built. Everyone knew that trains and railways would change the world, but no one predicted the invention of suburbs. Google, and the increased flow of information on which it rides and from which it benefits, is the railway. I don’t think we’ve yet seen the first suburbs.
I think we're beginning to see the suburbs--and they look horrible to me.
While many conservatives are wondering whether the sexual revolution was overall bad for women, I'm much more concerned that Google--and the Internet, generally--have destroyed the publishing industry, the newspaper business, high street retailing and our privacy, with consequences that have certainly been more deleterious to my happiness than the sexual revolution.
I have an ominous feeling about what the death of publishing and newspapers really means, a feeling that may not entirely be connected to the catastrophe it represents for me, personally, although it's hard to say.
As for the death of privacy, I'm dead certain we'll all live to regret that.
What do you think--was the Internet a big mistake?
***
Update: Thanks, E.J.! We love you!
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Comments:
Mar '11
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Paul: As regards your second point about info/knowledge, I think we can both agree that given the medium of a message board, a certain shorthand has to be employed to have a back-and-forth. No one can say everything without being tedious. Nevertheless, while hardly a perfect or comprehensive example, hopefully this will point you again toward the difference I have in mind:
I was recently at a family gathering during which one of my darling young nieces played a couple bars of Mary Had a Little Lamb. She played it (standing at the piano) and stepping on the pedals and pressing the keys in the required order, but she cannot read music, nor play any other piece of music. She does not fully understand the operations of the piano, the difference between black and white keys, the concept of scale, and so on.
She had learned the piece by rote, by sitting on her mother's lap and memorizing the sequence. Smart and observant, no doubt, but she doesn't really have knowledge of the piano or of music yet--she has barely a sort of surface understanding deployed through a kind of mimicry.
Mar '11
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Paul Snively: More to the point, why do you seem to believe that this process of local minima of quality of decision making is something new, introduced by the rise of the internet? Or am I misunderstanding your point?
Paul: Good points here--perhaps I was insufficiently clear in an earlier post--I most emphatically do not believe that this is something new or that is was caused by the internet for the first time.
Rather, I think the problem itself is a permanent one.
What I do believe is that the internet has provided a kind of cover for surface learning and the illusion of knowledge to be taken for the genuine artifact, and I think it has exacerbated certain habits which mak the genuine article more difficult to gain (or even ridiculed).
Because I think our awareness of the distinction has been partially dulled by the force of the internet and the ubiquity of the search engine, I simply want to remind us that these things are difficult and should not be confused--and therefore that it is in our interest not to regard progress in technology to be synonymous with progress in understanding.
May '10
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Welcome, Ned Ludd.
It occurs to me that, if you're serious, integrity demands that you resign from Ricochet.
Edited on April 1, 2012 at 9:48pmOct '10
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Thanks for driving that nail home. That is indeed precisely what I'm driving at. If that makes me sound like some kind of Hakim Bey Temporary Autonomous Zone/Sovereign Citizen/Constitution-in-Exile freak:
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
The death of newspapers means the end of reasonably well-funded news organizations dedicated to chronicling the daily life of a place. They’re not always fair; they’re never complete, but there’s no analogue. Our paper today has a story about the money the prison system spends on sick patients - one guy is getting about a million dollars’ worth of treatment for an incurable condition, including stem-cell treatment. The entire series is the result of one guy putting in two months of 40-hour weeks. Bloggers can’t do it all.
Newspapers aren’t a dead medium; they thrive in other countries. The bland, stolid, self-important model fails here because they’re either dull, or thin, or thin and dull. The old newspapers were unbelievably dense compared to today; they brimmed with life, and were intensely local. It’s a model most modern papers seem incapable of recognizing.
BTW: my favorite paper is the WSJ, and I can’t stand reading it on an iPad. It’s just a slurry of stuff. The print version is a meal.
Now, blowing up the book industry, hurrah. Good riddance.
Oct '10
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
I'm unsurprised to find myself in complete agreement with this. What I'm not finding is the same kind of criticism of, say, the academy. Nor am I finding anything resembling what strikes me as a pragmatic remedy. That's OK—maybe we're just venting here, and I love a good vent. But feel free to read this as my version of "OK, stipulated. Now what?" : -)
Mar '11
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
National papers will continue to live on, in a way, because the national reach means national funding. Locals have to fulfil a necessary function if they're to survive. I don't think my local will.
My own local rag, The Columbus Dispatch, insists on front pages about national issues (which it covers badly). It's actually OK on state-wide issues (though with an editorial deference towards leftist hacks from The Cleveland Plain Dealer - Thomas Suddes and Joel Riskind).
On local coverage, it certainly has human interest stories, but in terms of actual local NEWS, it's useless. Loves to make "issues" of things and publish long investigative series, but skant on news.
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Exactly, skipsul - there's no reason for local papers to lard the A section with wire stories about national news. My paper has been skewing local for a few years now and it's working well.
Mar '11
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
I keep hoping mine will too, but the more their circulation drops, the more lard they put in. Shame really. I found a 20 year old complete Sunday edition I'd put away in high school (had my dad's business on the front of the business section). I had forgotton how much more CONTENT the paper had then. The local coverage was good, the editorial bias much less.
We could use that level of reporting today.
May '10
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
One of the things that will help save local papers is to get rid of their AP contracts. When the wire service can no longer make local content available from a far away source people will return to the original source.
Go to the Miami Herald and type "Minneapolis" in the search box and a whole slew of stories pop up, many of them probably written by Lileks' co-workers.
Local papers try a paywall and their stuff still ends up available for free.
Nov '11
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
So you mean we shouldn't think we're smarter nowadays just 'cause we live longer and have cooler stuff?
Well, I'm inclined to reject the notion of "progress" altogether, or to accept only the medical conception that "progress" means the disease has gotten worse.
As far as progress in understanding goes, I guess it depends a lot on what we want to understand . . . or to express the matter in modern terms, what we want to do--since modernity rejects the possibility of "understanding" except in a very limited sense.
Modernity and its technologies were acquired in an exchange, and what specifically was given up in the exchange was the expectation, the hope, of understanding. The modern truth is that the only truth is that there is no truth. If you yahoos don't believe me, Google it.
Edited on April 1, 2012 at 11:44pmFeb '11
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Local papers...it strikes me that the competition for these is not so much Internet (at least for the purely local stuff) but the free "hippie" papers that exist in most large and medium-sized cities.
Jul '10
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Paul Snively
Huh? Don't expect anyoneto protect you on the Internet, any more than you would expect someone else to protect you in your own home. · 7 hours ago
But at least there are laws and legal precedent, sometimes even sensible, supporting your right to self defense in the home and even to control and manage your own property (through our princeps' august generosity, of course). After 20 years we have barely scratched the surface of how to practice safe Web use, as the next world war will show us in spades.
Jun '10
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
On balance, I believe the Internet is a good thing. Exhibit A: Ricochet.
Some of the pluses: The ready access to all kinds of information; the ease with which one can transmit information to others; the ability to connect dispersed families; it creates a serious alternative to the narratives of the MSM.
Negatives: Just as edifying content is available, the Internet is an extremely efficient means of distributing pornography (which, in my opinion, is a plague for society); Internet gambling (I'm not suggesting we ban it, but it is an easy way for people prone to addiction to continue to be sucked in); just as it creates connectedness, it can promote disconnectedness.
In the end, it is what we make of it.
Edited on April 2, 2012 at 12:18amJul '10
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Paul Snively
Hi. I write software for a living. My immediate reaction to this is:
"Google is trying to map my network so it can figure out which searches came from which computer, so it can offer more relevant results per-browser, which correlates nicely with per-user. Cool!"
And my immediate response with my decades in the trenches with clients who take ethics concerns seriously is, Google needs a seminar on the use of cookies. But their actual objectives became more obvious in the unfolding of their Google Streetview scandals and their grand "map the Internet" project. Google has this burning ambition to be the first to lose landmark decisions.
Among my favorite Eric Schmidt quotes: "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."
There's a brand worthy of consumer trust!
Sep '10
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
While many conservatives are wondering whether the sexual revolution was overall bad for women, I'm much more concerned that Google--and the Internet, generally--have destroyed the publishing industry, the newspaper business, high street retailing and our privacy, with consequences that have certainly been more deleterious tomyhappiness than the sexual revolution.
Do you have some economic information with which you could "flesh out" the notion of the destruction of the publishing industry, Claire? I'm interested in knowing about unit sales and dollar sales for books, especially nonfiction.
Oct '10
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Forgive me, but: what "Streeview scandals?" Some people were surprised to find that publicly available address data could be linked to publicly-available images taken from public land owned and maintained by the local public authorities. If this so much as surprises you, let alone bothers you, then I look forward to your vigorous participation in support of more stringent private property laws. Your issue is with the State, not Google. Not once, since they were a search engine running in Page and Brin's dorm room, has Google hidden their mission of making the world's information available at your fingertips.
And he's right. Searches don't happen in a vacuum. Google could add huge value by recognizing my goals and helping me attain them.
Apr '11
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
I must say I like having adds on google that are now tailored to me. I actually have a reason to click on them and consider what I should buy. Amazon regularly send me tempting e-mails with the latest things they think I might like. I don't always buy them but it is always nice to know what is available. It is like going to the electronics store every week just to browse. Maybe you will find a great deal or consider the merit of getting that new tablet pc...
Plus I am not sure how you can demand privacy in a public place like the internet. Isn't it sort of like asking that people on the street not look at what store you go into? Or that the clerk at the counter in the Baskin Robins not remember what ice cream you buy every week?
Mar '11
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Fair points all.
For our purposes here, I completely agree with you that the academy is subject to the same kinds of distinctions and has problems attendant to it also. I tried to remain on topic while still hinting at the broader problem.
As far as a pragmatic solution: I think the problem is permanent, all human institutions are subject to it in some way; there's no "10 step" remedy.
As far as the "so what", here are some take aways:
- Be aware that there is a problem. This makes you less likely to fooled and keeps you open to consulting other options.
- Be aware of the habits it can engender and guard against them in yourself.
- Use your voice to praise the sites that deserve it, and blame the ones that deserve it. Don't regard the whole enterprise as an unmixed good, try to drive traffic where it can do the most good.
Mar '11
Re: Is There Any Way to Shove Google Back in the Tube?
Tom Lindholtz: Welcome, Ned Ludd.
It occurs to me that, if you're serious, integrity demands that you resign from Ricochet.
Tom--not sure if this is directed at me or Claire, or maybe both of us and some others on the thread.
I have been at pains on this topic to attempt to establish, however provisionally, the distinction between mere luddite fuddy-duddyism and genuine awareness of a actual problem.
In the former case, the luddite fuddy-duddy is just stuck in his/her ways, blind to the benefits of the technology, and grumpily and irrationally turning inward against the world. This view would require one to resign from Ricochet.
But if there is a genuine problem, awareness of it does not make one a luddite. It makes one a critical thinker.
In the same way, I am glad that I am drive my car to work in the morning but by that fact, I don't have to believe that there is something virtuous about sitting in traffic.
I think we can be cautiously optimistic about the technology while recognizing it has some downsides--but we can only better the enterprise and mitigate them by first recognizing them.