Google: God in the Making?
 

No I don't mean to start an actual religious debate. But google is becoming quite the tool. I think one google makes the breakthrough of actually being able to directly answer questions rather than simply finding relevent links it will be one step closer to being an all knowing all seeing entity. Kind of like the Multivac from Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question" http://mit.edu/tylerc/www/twt/LQ1.htm

Google is the Multivac. Google will be the single most powerful tool mankind has ever created. It will know everything the internet knows, and will be able to process it as fast as a the best computer. What could be more powerful than that?

Knowledge.
Your own and what you can learn elsewhere in places such as:

http://www.searchlores.org/

Being equipped to think for yourself, finding really credible sources beyond the "published opinion", something that has become easier, because so much is available online and more complicated, because so much well-made PR borderline psychological warfare is online as well.

Google knows all about search lores dot net. And in google's prime (yet to come) you will be able to search for something and type in "not just common opinion" and google will bring the more underground stuff up to the top. Google doesn't discriminate.

Of course knowledge is power and the whole point I am making is google will make it easier than ever to aquire knowledge. You can learn the answer to anything you are pondering in no time at all. All of the greatest breakthrough all around the world will be (already are) on google, and can be easily found. Perhapse google will even be able to translate it into lamen's terms. Greatly increasing the realm of common knowledge.

what about the problem of duplication of 'knowledge' and the incomplete 'knowledge' and, dare we say, incorrect 'knowledge' that so often appears in the results pages of a google search.

google and the 'knowledge' it coughs up and vomits out is only as good as the pool it has to use. and let's face it, there is as much incorrect/duplicate/misleading/fragmented information on the internet as there is correct/unique/valid/complete.

having to grade numerous papers written by otherwise smart students, i am appalled at how bad the information is that they cull from the internet.

i'm not in the least worried about google becoming the most powerful machine. it won't. indeed, the more people rely on it, the easier it will be to distinguish the people who don't; they'll be the people who say something interesting and thoughtful and allude to the books that the google digitization project didn't get.

just my 2¢.

best,
darin

I am not sure why you feel such disdain for google. It is just a seach engine. If you want google to seach for scholorly journals from distiguished universities it can easily do so. Worried about google becoming the most powerful machine? You should be looking forward to it. A search engine capable of quickly and accuratly finding exactly what your looking for is exactly what I dream of.

The problem of bad info isn't googles problem, it's humanities problem and it will never go away. But there is plenty of correct information on google. And like I said as google gets new features, seach only academic works, or search only papers written by Ph D will be options... If they already aren't?

The way Google ranks pages and gives them relevance has extreme power with great potential for abuse. I'm not saying they do or will abuse this power, just that it is there. It has already been used to control what Chinese society can see (no need to open the political can 'o worms there, but it is fact that they are censoring results for the Chinese). This proves it is possible and they are willing to do it. Everything from there is just a matter of degrees.

As long as multiple engines prosper and are relevant, then such power is kept in check, while Google is disuaded from engaging in anything that would anger users.

Once Google launches their Wi-fi service, they will have a captive audience. Now they have full control of what you see. If I were them, I'd disable access to all the other search engines (you want free Wi-fi, you use our services, fair enough). Of course that will open another opportunity to control what people see and believe.

Who wants to bet that in less than 10 years we see monopoly lawsuits against Google?

i feel no disdain. indeed, i am completely ambivalent.

only those made available, which will never be the sum total of scholarly (or otherwise) print.

no, i explicitly said that i am not worried about it. i'm not sure what it would mean to be the most powerful machine (i adopted the locution from your implication about google becoming 'powerful').

i never said it was. instead, i said that google can never surpass the quality of its information pool. bad information is a characteristic (as is good information) of the internet (and all other repositories of 'knowledge').

simply selecting articles written by people with fancy letters behind their names won't insure the quality of that information (as you suggest in the previous line i quoted, though it's certainly not unique to the humanities -- think recently of the physicist jan hendrik schön who, while working at bell labs, was publishing on average a 'refereed' paper every 8 days in such journals as science and nature as well as more esoteric physics journals). so the addition of some filter that allows me to select articles/books/pages/etc written by 'experts' doesn't mitigate or ameliorate the problem.

again, i have nothing against google. i am, simply, unconcerned.

again, just my 2¢.

best,
darin

ps., this is not meant as an attack on anybody who uses or relies on google extensively. it is an expression of my opinions about my work habits.

[edit]edited to correct punctuation[/edit]

I think it will be a very good thing with print media becomes obsolete. For general intents and purposes that is.

Of course there is a risk of google turning bad. But if they keep going on the path they are on, I think they can only bring goodness to the world. Maybe I am being overly optimisitic. But I hope the heads at google are rich enough to care more about honesty than money.

Monopolies are a Bad Thing.
Print media will not go away for pretty much the same reasons TV didn't kill radio.

Sane competition among search engines (remember how great Yahoo looked until altavista came along ?) and more and more interesting blogs with no-bullshit contents will make the choice of sources richer, but what the german call "Medienkompetenz" (the ability to evaluate an information source in the process of forming ones opinion) is becoming an increasingly important skill.

There is an interesting interview of Brewster Kale, who founded and runs the Internet Archive project. Much of the Interview concerns how to organize and share information effectively. In the last half of the interview he talks about Google and what they are doing vs. what he is doing, and the differences between a for profit company and a non profit organization. The first half is more of a history lesson on the beginnings of the web.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/shows/
If you haven't checked out any of the NerdTV shows this is as good a place as any to start. I think all of the Interviews are very good. The video is not spectacular, it just shows the person talking. So you could download the audio version for listening via iPod.

A wealth of information that leaves us poor...
 

I beg to differ.
12Motion, I think there is a fallacy at the core of your argument:

Information is not knowledge!

Never has been, never will be.
In this respect Voldenuit hits the nail on the head.

Sure, I am impressed by Google. I use it many times daily in connection with my research. And my general impression is that Google, as a company, has a high degree of integrity. A number of their ongoing projects show creativity and great promise.
I do, however, fear that sometime in the future, Google Incorporated may be derailed – by shareholders or leaders with very different priorities.

I think already now, the skewing of search results has been thoroughly documented. I believe other Forum members have posted highly relevant links to prove that point.

In addition there is a multi-billion dollar IT/PR industry specifically aimed at influencing and skewing Google search results. The aim, of course, is to influenc our opinions, our consumer choices, our very acts. That alone is worth a whole essay!

Immediate access to information is a blessing of the Internet, Google included. But that is not an end-all! The problem is that we are overwhelmed with information and impressions. And garbage. All too easily the result is paralysis.

If a wealth of information is all we have, then we are in fact very poor.
Knowledge is a very different thing, indeed!

I don’t think we should inflate Google into something which it is not.


With best regards
ArcticStones


PS. As impressed as I am with Google, I am at least as excited by the developments of Wikipedia.

.

Althought knowledge and information are different words, theya are very closely related. The knowledge of yesterday is the information of today, and that information is what lets us go on, and develop more. All the time people save searching for information they need, is time they can be spending actually getting something done. The internet is the worlds biggest library, and the search engine is the helper. Eventually search engines will be so powerful they will make finding useful information an incredibly simple operation.

T.S. Eliot on Google-as-God
 

T.S. Eliot, The Rock (1934)

It does seem odd that people would be seeking information if it were not also part of their process for growing in knowledge. ;)

All in all, I'd have to say that Google has just plain out-hustled their competitors in a number of areas, and they've done it "fair and square." We still have choices; our web browsers don't automatically open to Google and don't bump or block out the competitors. They also know that their growing market share can be lost if they abuse their trust. The last thing we need is some kind of government intervention to "regulate" them.

Google's search engine is not half of what Alta Vista was back before it got ruint.

The only thing I really like about Google is the size of their searchable database.

They could throw away 98% of the bells and whistles and replace them with a true boolean search field and make me happy.

The amazing blank page
 

I will tell you what I value about Google, aside from the quality of its search results. It’s a blank page – the most valuable one on the Internet. Not a single ad! No blinking logos. Pristine and beautiful.

Google got it right.

:)

http://news.com.com/Google+ETA+300+y...1779&subj=news

I don't plan to be around then, do you?:)

Guinness’ 9000 year lease
 

Here is a bit of fascinating trivia – an impressive example of long-term planning:

In 1759, beer brewer Arthur Guinness founded the company bearing his name. When he leased the 60 acre property west of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, he insisted on a 9000 year lease – which he was granted.
(Incidentally, it cost him a flat payment of £ 100, and £ 45 per year after that. It is not known whether the recipient uses the total amount on a decreasing number of pints…)

With best regards,
ArcticStones

Google is old news
 

Google is old news. Its SandBox filters all new sites for 6 to 12 months.
Their alogarithm was working fine a couple of years ago when backlinks were natural. Now that every Webmaster buys and exchanges links for Its SEO, Google shows irrelevant and dated results. Their new algorithm doesn't seem to go to the right direction. I believe a new Search engine, with a new approach is going to make it big in the next few years. Yahoo with their human search is far more advanced than Google Auto filter bot.



Mac Poker

Google will be all knowing but as a computer it's missing one major factor. It can't screw things up.

Do you ever get the feeling the creativity is really our trying to make sense of our misperceptions? Like, we thought we saw someone doing something, or we heard it could be done somewhere. So we go and figure out how they did it (even though they didn't.)

Okay, that's bunk :). Even if it was interetsing. But it leads to a greater point.

Creativity, or thought as some have called it, requires the individual to see and understand that there is a need for something. Computers can't do that. They might see a deficite or lack, but they don't understand that there is something wrong with that. They just see it. Thus, they would never be creative because there is no need to be. You have to want something more than you have to be creative.

Programmers (like the ones at Google), can be creative. Since most programmers are never satisfied with what they are working on (in one way or another).

Thus what we really need is some way to store all of that information in a being that feels the world is generally speaking screwed up and has some innate desire to 'fix it'. (iRobot anyone?)

With Google, you can work on the moon...

http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html

Little supervision, beautiful views, wow. That nagging little oxygen thing gets me though.