Even though he wrote The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry), Siva Vaidhyanathan has plenty of good to say about the company. “Google has actually treated us very well,” he said during his Auditorium Speaker Series speech. “Google does a good job with what they offer and they do it for free…. They’re doing an amazing thing, and causing very little real-world measurable harm.”
But the breadth of Google’s influence should still give us pause, Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, said. He argued that individuals’ communication, their knowledge, and they themselves are increasingly affected by what Google says about them.
“In many ways Google operates theologically in our lives, if we don’t examine it,” he declared, noting the passionate affection the company receives from many of its users. Google may not exist in 20 years, or it may exist in different form with different values, and it is therefore dangerous to house so much authority in a single entity, even one with Google’s short but impressive track record.
Awareness of the technical process by which Google operates is one key. “If we can demystify the technology, we can engender respect for people behind it,” he said, as well as criticizing them when it’s warranted.
Vaidhyanathan’s proposal to accomplish this is the Human Knowledge Project, a long-term effort to overcome information discrepancies around the world. It’s modeled after the Human Genome Project.
During the genome project, a private company called Solara offered to create a project database, which the project was then missing. It offered this service for free, as long as it had the right to profit from the database. The scientists rejected the offer, and despite being underfunded and poorly coordinated, produced their own database as quickly as the company. “That’s possible if you think in a visionary, coordinated, political way,” Vaidhyanathan said.
“The Human Knowledge Project is not a library, but it must involve libraries as we know them,” to serve as nodes all around the world.
The project will develop slowly, over 50 years, and will be explicitly public, Vaidhyanathan said. “Google is just a company. It’s an amazing company. But what about a world beyond Google? Are we any closer to the notion of universal access to the best knowledge?”