Slashdot Mirror
Does Google = God?
lgreco writes "In an op/ed for the NYT, Thomas Friedman wonders "Is Google God?" Interesting article that disseminates things mostly known to and hopefully well understood by the Slashdot readership. The fact that such commentary made it to the NYT op/ed pages is remarkable." It's the NYT, so a free registration is required.
since google news does not need to register
2 9F RIE.html?ex=1057464000&en=5a99f13790700f88&ei=5062 &partner=GOOGLE[/url]
you can be god, too:
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/opinion/
A co-worker of mine has been claiming that google is god for two years now.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/29/nyt.friedman/
God wins
Give us now our dayly searches, forgive us of our articles, as we have put them in our keywords. Please O Google grant me now a privilige to use your mighty powers to find the answers to my searches.
So does this. Weird.
"... only one-third come from inside the U.S. The rest are in 88 other languages."
Americans may speak funny but generally its still known as english. Amazingly it's actually spoken outside of the US as well.
Does Google = God? Yes. Always.
:)
Does Google == God? Yes. Could change...but not likely
I mean, my first reaction to the question "Is Google God?" is "No... Next topic!" Presumably the article is asking something at least slightly more compelling or interesting, but we have no idea of what that might be.
The site is supposed to be news for nerds... not sound bites for nerds. Although I guess that is a lot of what passes for news in the States.
It just has some vague statistics about increasing numbers of Google searches and DNS requests in the last three years, then some specualtion by a talking head tech pundit about how "the rate of technological integration has intensified" and how in future everybody will be connected to everybody else.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Google search for google is god
some of the winners:
Google is God, Don't Piss Her Off
All Things Spiritual - Home of Google God! Pictures of Angels
Cold Fury: Good God Google
and last but not least: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Panopticon
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
While Google is the first thing I look at when I start up my browser... ...I am still waiting for Goollot. ;)
I thought this article was supposed to be about Google and God, but it was more about wi-fi and how wi-fi combined with Google will allow you to "find anything, anywhere, anytime". But it THEN goes on about how broadband adoption will allow al-Qaeda will be able to more easily send recruitment videos using video-on-demand. Of course, it mentions 9/11, as expected. It also says that America has to take "it" seriously. Oh, and it states a couple of interesting statistics. Yay. There, now you don't need to RTFA.
Note the last paragraph about the effectiveness of Osama bin Laden's recruiting videos, and the possibility of targeting them precisely via broadband video. Brrrrrr.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
So what is that supposed to mean? Only the english language is used in US searches or that outside the US there are no english searches? Maybe the assumption is that an english submission must be US-based.
I stopped reading the article at that point. I'm like that. Maybe I have some kind of disorder.
Political Correctness is doubleplusungood.
Summary : google + wireless = inforamtion available for everybody everywhere. They compare it to omniscience and thus gods (btw, where is the other part traditionnaly associated to gods, omnipotence :) ?).
Then they go on rambling that this will allow the bad guy to touch "more" the U.S. (what of the rest of the western world...?) and allow them unite quicker and better.
I think this is a "slow news" sunday, thus this [devoid of content] article went on slashdot...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
But that's not my point. My point is the comparison is quite ludicrous.
There is the disclaimer "little bit" in there, but even so, it feels a lot like Beowulfian "flyting" in the nasty "pay attention to me!" sense. Google may be wireless, but only when it piggy-backs on another, even vaster service, and even so, it's only such part of the time. Not to mention, as ability goes, it's not exactly omnipotent. And anyone who worships Google in more than a "Hey, I've got the toolbar" kind of way should probably reconsider their choice of deity. As dieties go, Google is probably a bit more deserving than some other common choices today, of course, but is still on the "Not such a great idea" side of the choices of "things, Things, dieties, and God's to worship."
Jeez Louise.. Terrorists will be using the interweb to organize more efficiently! Foreign people who hate use will be able to talk about us behind our backs! (No mention that the internet has done more to proliferate American culture and "values" than MTV or McDonalds, or that the internet can be, and actually is, used for good as well as evil..)
Don't get your panties in a wad, United States. Better start fearing your domestic Police State To Be!
OMFG! There's a knife next to my plate! What if a terrorist had sat down here!
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Thomas Friedman is the official gargoyle of the state. He's not a tech by any stretch of the imagination. I suspect he just lost a bet with someone who said he couldn't write an article without mentioning 9/11.
Laws are for people with no friends.
After reading this article I was quite disappointed. As has been said earlier it appears to be a fluff piece talking mostly about Wi-Fi followed by using google to find anything anywhere.
If I was a more suspicious person (or paranoid) I would think this was really an veiled attempt to scare people into being afraid of the big-bad Internat and its ability to link like minded people of various hatreds to each other in ways not before seen. Want to get permission to crack down on free-speach on the Internet? Articles like this will "encourage" people to think that's what is going to happen. After all, heaven forbid that Osama's recruiting video may be streamed on the Internet and it (according to the author) is very motivating.
Sounds like "Internet breads terrorism, we should all be afraid". Just what is needed before "we need to control what's on the internet to protect everyong" starts being said.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Drugs will do that to you sometimes, but the important thing is not to try and write articles and stuff in that "bent" state of mind. In my case, these delusions of grandeur usually pass in a few hours time. A good night's sleep should help too.
Peace \\//
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
the original post can be found here.
I hope the English translation is precise enough to preserve my argument.
cnn.com: Is Google God?
Slashdot|Does Google = God?
In a nice column in the New York Times (article at the same time taken over of CNN ) the question is set up whether google God is.
Naturally polemiken have again and again economic situation, if the reality is too contradictory or the purse calls thereafter, to fast still press a few lines into the next expenditure.
Why should Google be God?
Google supplies as well as all answers, if one knows the question. Here is the first thought error, because Google can only strengthen, which eh is already present. I have each day in my log file hit of retrieval queries, which are completely sense-free.
Google steers nothing to this pool however at 1986 a google on the existing techniques - Usenet, Gopher, ftp - jokeless would have been and a completely grotesque view into the world would have revealed. The way, as google will possibly determine the everyday life in the future, should be reason of enough to up-save the picture of the all-powerful Google still another little.
Google does not verify information. A little HTML Bastlerei is sufficient, in order to place * its * to view of the things in the net. The democratic beginning of google, through PAGE-climb the linking foot people on it co-ordinate to let, which sides are read worthy now, nothing changes in the fact that one makes oneself dependent on the majority and not by the truth.
If I would ascend over night at place 1 of any search words, then nothing would change in the coming day. Neither I nor my tools google have here the breath of a power.
Is a book God?
Who writes, remains (closely: publish or perish) is the antiquity variant of "google is God". Only indirect power each writing (googlebaren) person lies in the chance to change the collective memory little. Possibly and perhaps only for short time. Also over the thought of the eternity the connection God and Google could not be designed.
What is power?
Friedman sees a power in the connection of up-to-date available technologies (google via WAP or other wireless DEVICES). It does not create it to bind the actual time of the exercise of power to google. It would be already for it power (power in the sense of goettlicher power?), if I can in a 5-Millionen-Dollar-Quiz Show with google find out, which request was the last one of our dear Wolfgang Goethe?
If I chatte, besides always the google runs toolbar. It is an indication of attention opposite other persons, if one reads oneself in into its Hobbies and can them the feeling give to be interested in their requests. It is also fraud or espionage on my account, depends on circumstances. This is not divine action, this is also not striving for such a status.
Is Larry PAGE God?
If I look for in Google for President United States trust I to Dubya to be led and not too whitehouse.com or to Osama are Ladin. That I owe to the integrity of the people of Google Inc., which often gave reason in the past already to criticism. Keyword xenu.net. If in this whole Konstrukt someone makes has, then it is the administrator of the Google data base, which could return as desired search results. That is power, if at all.
Did anyone else get a chill through there spine that at that EXACT same moment John Ashcroft was reading that article ?
... ... ... scary isnt it?
and that very soon there will be a senate commitee on Google and search engines?
stop! just think about that for a while...
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
I've read Thomas Friedman's book, "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", and I can say the answer to that question is yes.
Thomas Friedman has a basic understanding that the 1990's saw major changes in the technological and social structure of the world. He uses this to make up sweeping trite statements about things that he doesn't really understand. Some of his statements are true, but he sugarcoats them and puts them in impressive terms that make them seem more impressive than they are.
For example, he has the famous statement: "Two nations with McDonald's have never gone to war with each other". Yes, that is true, but it actually means "advanced industrialized democracies don't go to war with each other", or perhaps "nation states no longer go to war with each other". But he puts it in flashy terms, and sounds like it is a magical formula.
"Is Google God" is his flashy way of saying "Is the internet a source of near endless information?". When you put it in those terms, then, well, yes, it is. But he gets away with being a serious writer by changing his words around and seeming to say something new.
It's people like him that make me wonder why Slashdotters ever bothered to complain about Jon Katz.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
2B or (not 2B) = FF
Or 'true', if you prefer a boolean value. I think you'll find a calculator is a better tool than a search engine for that kind of question...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
However, the real point of the article is that in an increasingly linked world, it is more important than ever to be good world citizens.
Lord Rees Moag and James Davidson make this point in their book 'Sovereign Individual": large countries become increasingly vulnerable to small countries and organized groups because of the threats of cyber attacks, etc.
As this article points out, with the free flow of information, small groups can share information and form larger political and action groups.
Not to be political, but I was against the recent Iraq War because I think that it is a very bad idea to alienate other countries when we largely depend on the global "dollar standard" for hoarding money and purchasing oil to prop up our economy. I am a more than a little concerned that our turning our backs on the UN will cause us all kinds of problems in the future. (BTW, the US has vetoed 35 UN security council resolutions ssince 1970 - so, it was not so atypical for Russia, France, and Germany to threaten to veto one of our resolutions.
-Mark
Here is the results on GoogleFight :
google is god = 157049 results
google is evil = 204364 results
Conclusion : Google is NOT God, Google is EVIL!! We are doomed!!
...It's always interesting to see which of the science-fiction concepts of my youth have actually come to pass. Moon travel came to pass, but certainly not the way Heinlein or H. G. Wells or Jules Verne imagined it.
In the sixties and early seventies, people were awed but poorly informed about computers. The commonest question that "lay" friends and relatives would ask me is "But what do you DO with a computer? Do you ask it questions?" That seemed bizarrely naive to me, and I would try to explain that it was more like playing with an electric train set, and that, outside of jokes, or Asimov's "Multivac" stories, you didn't "ask questions" of a computer.
Well, Google may not be Multivac, but it sure is a lot more like Multivac than H. G. Well's space gun or Cavorite sphere is like Project Apollo. You don't normally phrase the questions as questions, and it doesn't provide interpretative, English-language "answers," but it certainly is an awesome and it may not be omniscient but it's an order of magnitude more "scient" than anything else I've seen.
And, yes, it FINALLY looks as if "flat TV you can hang on a wall" is not only here, but I expect I'll be buying one within the next five years or so.
No helicars or voice typewriters yet, though.
(No, ViaVoice is NOT a good realization of the "voicewriter" fantasy. Oh, and for the record, to me, "Ask Jeeves" does NOT feel like Multivac at all, but Google does. I can't say why, that's just the way it strikes me.)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Yet another stupid reminder from the C programming language. Do they mean that Google has become God, or are they checking if they are the same?
Evolution of Language Through The Ages: 6000 BC : ungh, grrf, booga 2000 AD : grep, awk, sed
Three quickies:
When people go around saying "Google is God", you know it's time to short their stock... oh shoot, they haven't even gone public yet!
If Microsoft's upcoming squashes Google, does that mean Microsoft is the new god? Or is it Satan?
And what does it tell you that despite its vastly superior powers, that nobody has equated Microsoft to God in the NY Times?
Just reading the tea leaves,
--LP
It's not remarkable that this made it to the NYT op/ed pages. Anything written by Thomas Friedman is going to make it. What's remarkable is that he chose to write about it.
Friedman has written three books that generally focus on economics and globalization. He's won three Pulitzer prizes. A few of the other posts are knocking this article as fluff, or knocking Friedman in general. Whatever your personal views, people listen to him.
What's striking to me is that he writes on large political-type issues - globalization, 9/11, Isreal. He's not a tech writer. The fact that he took the trouble to go tour Google and then write a column about it is evidence of how entrenched Google is in his non-techie world.
Yeah, the article is fluff. It's nothing but Friedman's impression and opinions. But it ran on the print version of the New York Times. If it ran on CNet, I'd blow it off. In NYT's op/ed, it's another story.
JJ
Actually I prefer to think about Google, or the web in general, as the hitchikers guide to galaxy as described in Douglas Adams novels. It knows about anything but most of the time the answer might not quite be what you were looking for.
cu,
Lispy
Have you ever used the word "God?" Do you know what it really means? If not, is that ironic? Was Slashdot's "irony" really the cause of the utter collapse of civil society as we knew it? How ironic was it for Nietsche in Time magazine to declare God a victim of Nietsche's own nihilism process? The NY Times is running a brilliant article that muddles the confusion around a culturally critical and chronically misused word.
(shaking head)
Do you not know that Google is powered by Python, the living software symbol of the tempter of the fall of Adam and Eve?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
GW Bush: Get me some of that broadband video! I'm so sick of targeting Ossama Bin Laden only to hit a camel in the ass. That Google thing sucks. 2,900 answers but not one of them knows where I can find that asshole.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Google is not a god... it's only 2 3rds of it... loook
:)
Gods = Omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient.
google = omnipresent (accessible anywhere)
omniscient (knows every fraggin thing)
but still not omnipotent
when it starts creating global cathastrophes or ressurecting people, please warn me....
(sorry for my bad english)
I for one, welcome our new hot grits... PROFIT!
Well, he's a bitch. He only cleans up messes caused by the Devil. You know...if something bad happens, it's Satan. If something good comes out of it, hey, that's my God!
Blar.
And that brings me to the point of this column: While we may be emotionally distancing ourselves from the world, the world is getting more integrated. That means that what people think of us, as Americans, will matter more, not less. Because people outside America will be able to build alliances more efficiently in the world we are entering and they will be able to reach out and touch us -- whether with computer viruses or anthrax recipes downloaded from the Internet -- more than ever.
The point is more fear and paranoiac fantasies as only Thomas Friedman can spin, with an evil-doer under every rock, a terrorist behind every tree and, now, a rabid, sweaty-toothed madman coming to get us behind every keyboard.
From his lofty perch high atop the NY Times, Friedman has seen a career revival thanks to 9/11, winning a Pulitzer for his turgid writing about the event and its effects. When Friedman gets basic facts just plain wrong, it makes you wonder how much else he gets wrong, or otherwise intentionally distorts or misrepresents just so he can make everyone see the world through his lens where terrorists will get all of us.
Examples?
VeriSign, which operates much of the Internet's infrastructure...
and
A domain request is anytime anyone types in .com or .net
Really? The last time I checked VeriSign was only responsible for maintaining the .com and .net registries, as well as most SSL certificate services. There are 243 country code top-level domains, plus the .org TLD, not just .com and .net. The way Friedman makes it sound it's as if there's nothing else out there, and I'm not sure which is worse: that he was too lazy or too apathetic to talk to anyone other than VeriSign to get a basic understanding of the Internet to accurately write about it for his many non-technical readers.
These are basic facts and are simple to check. Any journalism student can do this so why doesn't Friedman?
Given his penchant for hyperbole in overstating the negative consequences of everything and minimizing the positives, it's no surprise that Friedman has completely missed the fact that the same technologies he fears are just as capable of opening up communications. He says that while the world is growing more integrated and what the world thinks about the USA will matter more, the USA is becoming ideologically isolationist and it doesn't need to heed what the rest of the world tells it. Proliferation of the Internet facilitates the free exchange of ideas that can result in better understanding and relations with the rest of the world, which Friedman apparently believes is full of nothing but some sort of irrational monolithic hatred.
When Friedman takes such a reductionist view of the world that amounts to Us vs. Them, is it any wonder that all Friedman can see are terrorists, terrorists everywhere and not a refuge in sight.
When the only tool you have is a hammer the whole world looks like a nail.
Growing up I remember the quote "God knows the number of hairs on your head." I know that Google doesn't know the answer (I just searched to make sure). So that means that Google is NOT God.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
I awoke this morning from a dream where Google was powered by some ancient, evil, seductive force. Just as I often am in real life, in my dream I found myself curious about some random issue, and decided to research it via Google. In this instance, I was curious about what the lives of precious-stone-traders/exchangers were like, how they travelled, and how they moved their goods.
When I opened a browser to http://www.google.com, I suddenly found myself transported to a dark room, one which felt, smelt, and looked as though it was within a long abandoned motel in a rainy, cold, climate. A grimy stone slab of roughly 4:3 dimensions lay on a table before me, glistening with condensation.
A beautiful woman appeared, dressed seductively in red and black, and bade me to enter my query. Somehow, I knew to put my fingertip to the slab, and the moment I made contact, wispy shadows swirled out from within its crevices and surrounded my fingertip. They nipped at it, they pierced the skin, and with my blood, I scrawled out, "precious stone jewel exchange trader carrier lifestyle travel".
The shadows at once covered my bloody query, writhed and congealed and when they finally withdrew, I found that the writing had been rearranged to read, "I'm feeling lucky". I screamed in terror and pounded on the message with my fists, sending dark red droplets flying from the stone.
I looked up to see the woman smiling. When I returned my gaze to the stone slab, I saw the shadows slowly etching out a shape, simple, symmetrical. Trickles of black ran down the face of the stone from its far side, creating soft curves. It... it was a vase, with a notch in its base. It slowly filled with color, a light sort of beige, taking on a photographic quality and it was then that I realized... it wasn't a vase, it was a top-down view of some chick taking it up the ass.
What a goofy term. The answer is necessarily yes and no at the same time because God means something different to everyone.
To me, God is a name for entropy, the thing that makes life random, though only because we cannot detect and account for it in a meaningful fashion, in most cases. The devil is in the details, and it don't get any more detailed than entropy. Mind you, I think the Devil and God are just different sides of the same thing; entropy that hurts you, and entropy that works in your favor.
Google is the opposite of entropy. It helps us bring order to chaos. It's a really good automatically generated index (while Yahoo and DMOZ and similar sites are tables of contents) and nothing more.
Now if you want to get into a more metaphysical discussion, google helps make us more than we are because knowledge is power but only if you can get your hands on it and use it. Google puts more information at our fingertips. Someday when we're communicating with our computer implants via thought (or perhaps subvocalization, at least sooner than thought) it's going to be an indexing system (or several of them) that lets us make concise queries and get a relevant answer back, just as it is today, and that certainly seems godlike. Imagine being stuck in bumfuck nowhere and being able to just sort of ask the air what to do. Talk about talking to god. Of course, you're just accessing a network, but what is God anyway? Which just brings us back to how silly the name of the article is.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
AllTheWeb indexes more documents.
Microsoft has decided to compete with Google.
Yes Google is a cool search engine, but come on folks, you get the same top ten results from even the weakest sites.
I wonder if they're hiring...
What Friedman is talking about, and has written about before, is globalization. Look at it this way, what are his goals for this article? He wants people to realize that, more than ever, the US is an equal partner in the world, that we need to be good listeners. Information is the great equalizer, right?
He is worried about a return to isolationist tendencies of the early 1900s. Is is worried, because it is no longer possible to isolate ourselve from the world. Of course, it was a bad idea back then, but that's another story.
Perhaps he is using FUD to convince people to listen to him, but in this case I think it for a good goal, encouraging the US to take more responsibilty for its actions present and past and realize that we cannot view the world as us and them.
After all, what better way to get people's ear these days then to discuss the terrorist threat?
Spencer Ogden
Blessed are the pretarded, for they will make comments like yours... Yes, I read the WHOLE article. Because he felt his usual overwhelming need to relate everything to 9/11, he LOST a bet that he COULDN'T write an article without referencing 9/11.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Thomas Friedman has it right with his main point, that what others think of us, and the ability of others to communicate, matters more--put simply, as the six British soldiers found when they died by mob the other day, all the military might in the world is not going to matter when billions decide to overrun Europe from Africa, Russia from China, and the US from south of the border. Goggle is good and getting better, but here are two reasons why it is a bishop at best: 1) Google technical people (disclosure, they blew off the ideas at oss.net) are enamoured of their original algorithms and not willing to take on the micro-cash, copyright, and audit issues associated with googleizing privately owned information that can then be accessed a la carte in both moderated and unmoderated form, on a cash and carry basis; and 2) they don't seem to be focused on the importance of getting a solid partnership going with the various language translations softwares that Bill Gates is "shutting out" of cyberspace. There are a whole range of concepts from the US intelligence community (which is half brilliant, half village idiot, its the brilliant part we want Google to think about) that could indeed allow Google to become the information merchant bank and true information commons for the world. They do great with what is there now--my estimate is that they will never be more than a 20% solution unless they set some standards, adopt multi-level security algorithms that allow the sharing of government secret and corporation confidential information, and get serious about language translation.
That explains SO MUCH!
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Evidently your dreams are actually AD&D campaigns.
google is good = about 1,820,000 results
google is a search engine = about 1,630,000 results
google sucks = about 137,000 results
google is Shiva = about 9,440 results
google is a tuna fish sandwich = about 851
Somewhat circular, but that aside, I think Google's nature is reasonably clear.
Tweet, tweet.
Sometimes this is a good thing. If I am curious about ultralight aircraft, or antique radios, or some other hobby with a limited number of enthusiasts I can quickly find a lot of information, join a group, and get involved.
But it also means that if my interests tend more toward alt.suicide.holiday or thinking the Jews have taken over the government, I could quickly find other people to reinforce those tendencies. Friedman concentrates on the most devastating aspect of this, and just because it's one end of a bell curve doesn't mean his point is wrong.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Bah. C has corrupted me from understanding natural markup.. I did read it as 'assign God to Google' first.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
A site at www.google-watch.org put up a cartoon about this that pretty much says it all.
Naturally Google = God, but the real question is whether Google == God :)