FOOD FOR THOUGHT ON BEING OVER GOOGLIZED

Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) (Berkeley & Los Angeles: U. of California Press, 2011) ("This book argues that we should influence--even regulate--search systems actively and intentionally, and thus thane responsibility for how the Web delivers knowledge. We must build the sort of online ecosystem that can benefit the whole world over the long tern, not one that serves the short-term interests of one powerful company, no matter how brilliant." Id. at xii. "Google seems to offer us everything so cheaply, easily, and quickly. But nothing truly meaningful is cheap, easy, or quick." Id. at 4. "Because market fundamentalism declares that consumers have 'choice' in the market, doing little or no harm becomes just another tactic by which vendors exploit a niche market. Consumers have become depoliticized, unable to see that personal choices to buy Timberland shoes (not made in sweatshops by children) and Body Shop cosmetics (not tested on animals) makes no difference at all to the children and animals that suffer supplying the bulk of similar, less sensitively manufactured products to the vast majority of the world's consumers. Feeling good about our own choices is enough. And instead of organizing, lobbying, and campaigning for better rules and regulations to ensure safe toys and cars for people everywhere, we rely on expressions of disgruntlement as a weak proxy for real political action. Starting or joining a Facebook protest group suffices for many as political action." Id. at 43. "By focusing on the novelty of communicative technologies and assuming that their arrival in a place causes--rather than coincides with or aids--rapid change, we tend to downgrade the importance of factors as obvious and powerful as changing a government policy, opening a gate, or waging a disastrous and debilitating war in Central Asia. The introduction of a powerful and efficient mode of communication such as the fax machine or the Internet can amplify or accelerate a movement, provided that the movement already has form, support, substance, and momentum. Technologies are far from neutral, but neither do they inherently support with freedom or oppression. The same technologies . . . can be used both to monitor and oppress a group of people and to connect them in powerful ways. The way a society or state uses a technology is as important as the design and capacities of that technology." Id. at 123-124.).