Boston Globe Magazine: A Nation of Voyuers (cover story), How the Internet search engine Google is changing what we can find out about one another - and raising questions about whether we should.
Google changed our concept of time as well. It has helped make our past - or oddly refracted shards of it - present and permanent. That's a radical notion for a medium usually defined by its ability to constantly update itself.
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"It's the collapse of inconvenience," says Siva Vaidhyanathan, assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University. "It turns out inconvenience was a really important part of our lives, and we didn't realize it."
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There is a palpable culture to the place that occasionally borders on the cultlike. Almost every employee I talked to, for instance, shared the conversational tic of ending sentences with an octave-climbing "right?" as if waiting for my buy-in. Many began their responses to questions with an extra slow "So-o-o," as if to say: "I'm going to make this simple for you." Employees tend to quote the founders liberally, saying things like, "As Sergey said at our holiday party, we have to think about Google's impact on the world . . ." or "As Larry and Sergey say, our goal is to organize the world's information!"
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So she opted for Google revenge. Amanda created an alternate digital identity for her former boyfriend - a personal Web page that would, in all likelihood, be accessed only by those people Googling him by name. On this over-the-top Web page, the guy makes a series of mock confessions that, if taken seriously, would be toxic in any future dating situation. He "admits" to being untrustworthy, jobless, sneaky, a lousy lover, and, finally, a carrier of venereal disease. Hey, Mom, let me tell you a little bit about my new boyfriend.
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It looks like nothing more than a Xerox machine, but the $15,000 e-Cabinet can convert reams of court documents into searchable computer files. That means it can go a long way toward helping the register, Richard Iannella, realize his dream of creating a fully digital court.
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I've never met Suzanne or Gregory, but by simply poking around the Hamilton County Web site, I was able to read the full appeals court judgment in their divorce, complete with their salaries and competing child support claims, down to the penny. When I then typed their full names in Google, the same document popped up instantly.
Posted by Aaron Swartz on February 03, 2003 02:50 PM