Experimental Blog #76

Comments on "The Googlization of Everything - {And Why We Should Worry}" by Siva Vaidhyanathan and "The Net Delusion" - The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov

Not surprisingly, the first book, by Siva Vaidhyanathan, is all about the American giant internet corporation "Google". Although not so important in Russia and China, and for some good reasons, "Google" provides amazing virtually magical information services in many realms: news, maps, books, and, it seems, almost everything else; in America, Europe, and throughout the world. Although, most people probably have other things to "worry" about, they should know more about the implications and consequences of this vast private enterprise network.

In the index to the 2nd book, by Evgeny Morozov, the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is referred to on 27 pages of this approximately 330 page book. The rather distant 2nd and 3rd place people are referred to only on 8 and 7 pages. In other words, the author is quite critical of the liberal views that he characterizes as "internet-centric" and "cyber-utopian". Instead, he promotes his own views, very thoroughly and persuasively, that he calls "cyber-realistic".
Essentially, however, even someone who knows very little about the extremely complicated subject can understand that the "Internet" can be said to do 2 elementary things: it connects people and it provides information and/or entertainment. The author uses very different words, of course, but, in how many ways, and for what many different purposes, can the "connectable people" of the world's over 6 and one half billion people be connected? And besides "true facts", whatever that might mean, the internet is used to spread all kinds of opinions, propaganda, gossip, slander, deliberate lies, and whatever else anybody can think of.
For these and other reasons, we might say that the author wants us to think that the internet-cyber-future of the "global village", which is a term he apparently scorns, is not all that "rosy", as far as anybody can really imagine.