The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry) by Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of California Press, 2011

The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry) is the second book I’ve recently read and reviewed on the subject of Google. The first was In the Plex by Steven Levy.

This book, in my opinion, stands to polarize its readers and perhaps cause some to close ranks and take sides. For even though at first blush, it seems a reasonable, scholarly volume, in actuality, it is a rather brilliantly-fashioned wakeup call.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author, is Professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia. He is also unfailingly articulate, and the author of two other cautionary tales – Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity; and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System. Clever, yes? The titles should provide insight into his point of view from inside the storm of information that swirls around us constantly.

Now I’ll ask you to take a moment and reflect on the pervasive role of Google in your life – as this is what the author prompts us to do at a comfortable distance into the book. The web is “there” – it comprises a huge portion of our modern reality, and has been growing exponentially, and in defiance of quantification, since around 1994 for most people. Factor in blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and your fill-in-the-blank choices for social media, and it has become a massive, multifaceted mirror. Further factor in The Cloud – and you may end up with your mind just a little bit blown.

Regardless of what your individual ideas are upon the above reflection, there can surely be no doubt that every territory – even the fourth dimensional sort – requires a point of entry, and a map. Vaidhyanathan asserts and establishes that Google has become that map – the ultimate meta-map juiced up on speed, if you will.

Furthermore, Google is a dauntingly efficient, self-expanding map – improving efficacy each time someone uses it; a map that retains and employs specific knowledge about each individual, and possesses awareness of search patterns in the minds of the untold numbers who use it as their entrée to the web.

Furthermore still, Google owns its own version of the worldwide web, copied and cached onto its servers, to provide answers to your queries in ever more refined, and expeditious degrees. Google’s web is focused on building a self-fulfilling, uniquely understanding relationship with you, and each time you use it, it’s doing exactly that.

Our lives are hectic, and anything that can streamline and simplify our daily work and private routines is to be embraced and appreciated, right? Professor Vaidhyanathan thinks not. He offers that by “taking a mess and putting it into order”, and insisting it does no evil, Google obtains power predicated on our habits and complacency, the way we turn to it by default. The book poses rhetorically “Who are you to Google?” are you the sum total of your shopping preferences, and web surfing habits? Each time you search for hand car washes within your zip code, or purchase new Louboutin heels, you’re relinquishing a fraction of your privacy, and Google gains another “data point” to fuel its functionality.

The author provides an adroit analysis of the rather disturbing fashion in which Google has altered our version of the “public sphere” – the concept of a realm of daily life, which has its classic roots in real-time, face-to-face interactions, the art of conversation and discussion of the issues of the day. He reminds us that there was a time when culture was enriched through an intermingling of persons, and importantly, through their literature.

With which idea the author brings us to the recent legal halt of Google’s digitization blitz. Should we entrust our heritage and collective knowledge to a company that’s been around for less than thirteen years? Vaidhyanathan says no, and adds his voice to that of other academics who are calling for a Digital Public Library – an organization for the new information age, beholden to no single corporation.

It’s doubtless unwise to accede to the final dissolution of the public sphere on Google’s terms.

*As of this writing “The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry”) is also available on Amazon in Kindle edition with audio/video, and Audible Audio.

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Googlization-Everything-Why-Should-Worry/dp/0520258827

For more information about “The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry”) and Siva Vaidhyanathan visit http://www.googlizationofeverything.com/

Based on this review, would you read this book?

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