Learning to Love the Panopticon

mitd writes: "Cory Doctrow has written an insightful article about Google, search engines and how he stopped worrying."

Comments

Re:There's a problem with this

[GigsVT]

I've thought of this myself. I know I don't do nearly as much "surfing" between related sites now that Google is here and works. I usually hit Google up, then if that site isn't what I want, I don't bother clicking their links section, I just go straight back to Google.

The one thing that may save us though is AOLers. Bear with me here. :) I think that maybe we have found the most efficient way to get the information we want, mostly because the novelty of the Internet has mostly worn off for us. We no longer spend hours bouncing from site to site, just reading random stuff. We use the Internet as a tool to expand our effective knowledge and intelligence.

This is obvious with the various Googlebots that have sprung up in lots of IRC chat rooms. This happens a lot in help rooms, if no one knows the answer, or doesn't want to take the time to explain it fully, they just !google and the bot returns the first link in the search.

So while people like us, if we were the only people on the net, would cause Google to fail, so long as there are still "surfers" out there, it should allow Google to remain meaningful.

Just my two cents.