exposure versus control

We all have our takes on Google. They [google] are either the anti-christ or the greatest thing since the latest toaster patent: the thing that 'pops' your bread up when done. Or, where most of us land, it is a little bit of both. I must say that I love GoogleEarth and find it fascinating, but I also find it a bit eerie. The world is becoming so small, I need only know the address of the forbidden city to view it from 15 feet in the air. Most of us cannot really articulate what makes Google so appealing, yet somehow strangely wrong. This article does a great job describing the battle going on between google and everthing else. As they describe it: Google represents exposure, everything else represents control. Exposure versus control.

If you think about it, this makes sense. Have you ever "googled" your name? It is at the same time the most eerie and exciting thing when you see your name exposed as such. You have no control over who views whatever there is to view online concerning your name. You are exposed. And as it goes, more and more information will be amassed, whereby Google, the great exposer, will enable all peoples to find and look and cut and paste.

This world is becoming flat, as Thomas Friedman says. No longer to people have a hold, or control, over certain things. The world is not top-down any longer, it is bottom-up. if there even is an up nowadays. We, the bottom-dwellers have access to information only top-dwellers had 10 years ago (i.e. GoogleEarth's sattalite imagery, how-to's on EVERYTHING via the web, amateur blogs which get to the breaking news quicker than cnn and fox combined, computer software that is free--both free to use and free to enhance, thus challenging Microsoft's top-down marketing, and even the encylopedia: the wikipedia online grants public additions and improvements to every article...and the result is a democratic encyclopedia for the people and by the people that organically corrects itself as people from all over ammend it hourly).

And I shouldn't even start on music. Which is better, control or exposure? Well, we all know this 'intellectual property' is heading straight to Google hell: exposure ad infinitum.

Anyway, this is a rant. Here is the great article that produced the rant.