Harsh Words for Google from Culture Critic
April 10, 2013
Prominent Belarusian author and self-proclaimed Internet foe Evgeny Morozov is fond of criticizing “web culture.” The Telegraph takes a look at his point of view in, “Google is Run by Adolescents, says Evgeny Morozov.”
The writer has been making waves while promoting his recent book, To Save Everything Click Here, with his stand against what he calls “solutionism”—the tendency to delegate responsibility to technology. Specifically, he rails against Google for pushing solutions to non-existent problems, and for making tools that anticipate our needs. Reporter Christopher Williams met with the controversial thinker, and shares Morozov’s observations:
“Google’s vision is tools that will do things for you. Look at Siri [the iPhone’s voice-controlled assistant software]. What Siri tries to do is answer your questions. The way Google’s equivalent, Google Now, works is very different. It tries to pre-empt your desires before you have even recognised them as desires. It will check you into your flight without you asking, check the weather for you at your destination and all of that happens without you asking for it.”
Revenues suggest that Google has a model which works, but is it to the detriment of society at large? Morozov seems to think a reliance on such “internet-centric” solutions will somehow erode our status as higher-thinking organisms, that having tools to do the work for us will dumb us down. However, similar objections have been leveled at new ways of doing things since inventors started tinkering. I think the human mind and spirit are more resilient than he gives us credit for.
Cynthia Murrell, April 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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