The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) [Hardcover]

The Googlization of Everything offers a crisp vision for what kind of information society we should be building. That one might not agree with it is a feature -- this is a book that doesn't state the obvious. Rather, it pushes us to rethink what we take for granted, noticing the medium in which we swim, instead of just moving right along.

The book is an impressive synthesis of the current thinking on and around Google -- much of it applicable to any contemporary dot-com with runaway success. One of Siva's objections to the "googlization" of the online knowledge space is that while institutions like libraries and universities typically plan to be around in a hundred years, companies like Google do not necessarily have, or plan for, such staying power. This is a nicely contestable sentiment -- that, as a corporate entity, Google is inherently shorter lived then, say, the University of Virginia, or at least its values are less consistent over time. It sets up a deeper question of what mix of institutions ought to contribute to the world and serve as gateways to our accumulated knowledge, and with what ethos (ethoi?).

In the last section, Siva proposes a Human Knowledge Project. The name is derived from the Human Genome Project. It is intended to be a "global information ecosystem," essentially a Google by and for the public sphere: "The Human Knowledge Project should [be] open, public, global, multilingual, and focused. It should be sensitive to the particular needs of communities of potential knowledge users around the world, yet it should be committed to building a global system that can erase the gaps in knowledge that current exist between a child growing up in a poor village in South Africa and another growing up in a wealthy city in Canada." The Human Knowledge Project also builds on the criticism that Google's rise to such extreme prominence is due in part to the failure of the public sector; thus Siva's proposal is a straight argument for a transfer of power back from private to public hands.

A major difference between this idealized project and the internet (or Google) as it exists now is its central focus on existing libraries as knowledge hubs. One of Siva's central concerns about Google, which emerges in the sections on Google Books and Google Scholar, is its pre-emption of librarians as organizers of knowledge. In his other work -- see The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System -- Siva has sought to articulate a central role for librarians that some in the information studies community have yet to grasp. The Googlization of Everything is in some ways a sequel: a welcome contribution to our debates over the future of access to knowledge, one blending intimate knowledge of what librarians (and their digital corporate counterparts) actually do with a strong sense of what differences between them matter -- why the library remains of crucial importance as a mediating institution in a society awash in information.

Google's been in the news a lot the past week. Concerned about the quality of their search results, they're imposing new penalties on "content farms" and certain firms, including JC Penney and Overstock.com. Accusations are flying fast and furious; the "antichrist of Silicon Valley" has flatly told the Googlers to "stop cheating."

As the debate heats up and accelerates in internet time, it's a pleasure to turn to Siva Vaidhyanathan's The Googlization of Everything, a carefully considered take on the company composed over the past five years. After this week is over, no one is going to really care whether Google properly punished JC Penney for scheming its way to the top non-paid search slot for "grommet top curtains." But our culture will be influenced in ways large and small by Google's years of dominance, whatever happens in coming years. I don't have time to write a full review now, but I do want to highlight some key concepts in Googlization, since they will have lasting relevance for studies of technology, law, and media for years to come.

Cryptopicon

Dan Solove helped shift the privacy conversation from "Orwell to Kafka" in a number of works over the past decade. Other scholars of surveillance have first used, and then criticized, the concept of the "Panopticon" as a master metaphor for the conformity-inducing pressures of ubiquitous monitoring. Vaidhyanathan observes that monitoring is now so ubiquitous, most people have given up trying to conform. As he observes,

[T]he forces at work in Europe, North America, and much of the rest of the world are the opposite of a Panopticon: they involve not the subjection of the individual to the gaze of a single, centralized authority, but the surveillance of the individual, potentially by all, always by many. We have a "cryptopticon" (for lack of a better word). Unlike Bentham's prisoners, we don't know all the ways in which we are being watched or profiled--we simply know that we are. And we don't regulate our behavior under the gaze of surveillance: instead, we don't seem to care.

Of course, that final "we" is a bit overinclusive, for as Vaidhyanathan later shows in a wonderful section on the diverging cultural repsonses to Google Street View, there are bastions of resistance to the technology:

One search engine professional, Osamu Higuchi, posted an open letter to Google staff in Japan on his blog in August 2008. The letter urged Google staff to explain to their partners in the United States that Street View demonstrates a lack of understanding of some important aspects of daily life in Japan. Osamu urged Google to remove largely residential roads from Street View. "The residential roads of Japan's urban areas are part of people's living space, and it is impolite to photograph other people's living spaces," Osamu wrote. . . .

A person walking down the street peering into residents' yards would be watched right back by offended residents, who would consider calling the police to report such dangerous and antisocial behavior. But with Google Street View, the residents can't see or know who is peeping.39 Osamu's pleas and concerns were shared by enough others in Japan that by May 2009, Google announced it would reshoot its Street View images of Japanese cities with the cameras mounted lower, to avoid peering over hedges and fences.

There are a number of other examples in the book of technology being modified to adopt to cultural norms. But the dominant story is of cultural norms being reshaped by deployment of new technologies.

Public Failure

Progressives often cite "market failure" as a reason for regulation. But the term itself has a hidden laissez-faire bias, implying that markets generally succeed and that intervention is extraordinary. Vaidhyanathan balances the playing field by introducing the idea of the "public failure," which itself is parasitic on a larger vision of endeavors naturally performed or sponsored by government or civil society. As he explains,

[N]eoliberalism. . . .had its roots in two prominent ideologies: techno-fundamentalism, an optimistic belief in the power of technology to solve problems . . . and market fundamentalism, the notion that most problems are better (at least more efficiently) solved by the actions of private parties rather than by state oversight or investment.

Neoliberalism [included] . . . substantial state subsidy and support for firms that promulgated the neoliberal model and supported its political champions. But in the end the private sector calls the shots and apportions (or hoards) resources, as the instruments once used to rein in the excesses of firms have been systematically dismantled. . . . .

Google has deftly capitalized on a thirty-year tradition of "public failure," chiefly in the United States but in much of the rest of the world as well. Public failure, in contrast, occurs when instruments of the state cannot satisfy public needs and deliver services effectively. This failure occurs not necessarily because the state is the inappropriate agent to solve a particular problem (although there are plenty of areas in which state service is inefficient and counterproductive); it may occur when the public sector has been intentionally dismantled, degraded, or underfunded, while expectations for its performance remain high.

Vaidhyanathan's call for a "Human Knowledge Project" in response to this trend is one of the few tech policy proposals that is bold, ambitious, and comprehensive enough to address the challenges posed by privatized knowledge systems.

I was first introduced to Siva Vaidhyanathan's work a few years ago when he gave a presentation on the Google Books Project, a project in which my institution was set to participate with full force. As a librarian with a love of technology but a hearty skepticism about its effects on society, I expected the presentation to be a love letter to Google. Instead the presentation turned out to be a love letter to libraries and librarians, and I have been a fan of his ever since.

I found the same his latest book, the "Googlization of Everything". The idea of "techno-fundamentalism" resonated deeply with me as I have struggled with efforts in my profession to abandon tried and true methods of librarianship and information science in the rush to embrace the latest gadget or newest technology. Indeed, American culture (and it could be argued Western culture as well) has become fascinated with all things tech to the point of techno-fundamentalism, or a blind faith in technology and its ability to solve all the world's problems. Technology has done great things for the human race, but has also had weighty consequences as well.

The author does not seek to destroy Google or even hope for its demise. Instead he argues that we need to take back the objects of our culture from Google and others who, in the name of technology, progress, faster search and access, would seek to monopolize them and make money from them. I appreciate Dr. Vaidhyanathan's vision for a Human Knowledge Project, and hope to assist him and others in making that a reality. True change will only come about through deliberation, debate, and collaboration. It will not be handed down from a "benevolent giant" like Google.

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