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TIMES POSTCARD
Our times, our mores, our search engines
By Rajpal Abeynayake
Has Google gone ga-ga?
Apart from the attempt at aliteration, there is significance in that question. Recently, Google the world's search site for everything from noodle recipes to Nirvana, gave up its policy of never encouraging evil. Or at least so they say.
In order to capture the Chinese market Google agreed to blot out certain sites from the Google China version.

That has human rights activists screaming at Google, saying the site's owners have given up on the Chinese people for filthy lucre.
But that's not the issue, really is it?
What human rights with Google?
With Google anybody can find anything about anybody else. Well, almost.
There is such a thing as Google-stalking. It might sound a bit alienating, talking of Google in this country.

This country's problems are generally greater than what can be stated in six letters --- "G-o-o-g-l-e.'' Gargantuan is more like it.
But, Google has slunk under-radar into the Sri Lankan culture. Recently, two scholars engaged in a debate, and one claimed that he is more Google-cited in ‘Google scholar’.

Sometimes, Google does nasty things of course. Google News picks up some newspapers, and not others. That depends on some cosy arrangement.
This gets some articles cited more than others, but as if Google gives a two cents about that. It boils down to the fact that Google has a stranglehold over more things in our lives than can be imagined.

Google is the ultimate globalizer, and Sri Lanka is also caught by the jugular by Google. They have the temerity to tell me about human rights in China? There are other things Google should feel guilty about, but since everybody is talking about human rights in China, I almost feel a little shy talking about Google's other seamier side.

Google wants to put novels in its Google library, and that violates copyright.
This is being stiffly resisted, but Google's original intention is somewhat gross.
In other words nothing is sacrosanct anymore now that we are all creatures of Google. Next time it is possible that what's written here is taken over by Googgle before it reaches you, or before it reached even my computer -- right out of my brain, right into Google-search, with those long ooooooooooooooooos.

This is primeval; its as if computer viruses and computer worms came to life, and the worms became large Gooooooogle searches -- and started sucking the life out of the people of this world like a tape worm sucking on an intestine.
Google is big brother squared -- big brother to the 25th power.
Google is George Orwell's worst nightmare magnified seventeen times.
But even so life without Google is also difficult.

"Do you Yahoo" is like a nice little reminder of the stone-age Flintstones, compared to the cry "do you Google?"
If you do not Google -- then you should be recommended for a Nobel Prize yet to be invented.

How do you live gracefully while Googling and yet not grossing out others with your snoopy behavior?
I suppose the best would be not to Google excessively, but to do it with reference to one's own cultural moorings. For example, if you want to find anything about Kumaratunge Munidasa do not go to Google, ask the man's nephew.

But Google is always there -- like a grandpa who is both a sweet man and a cantankerous know-it-all. This grandpa will oooze Munidasa Kumaratunge out of his exhaust.
We do not know whether to dump him or to give thumbs up.

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