Google!

            In The Googlization of Everything, Siva Vaidhyanathan argues we are at risk of an overwhelming influence from Google. Under its precept of “Don’t be evil,” Google has led us to stop questioning the good intentions of the company. Whether its attempts are good or bad, however, its effects are monstrous. Google has changed the way we think about problems “by crowding out other alternatives” (6). Every time we search on Google to solve a problem, we are subject to Google’s perspectives, and ““Its process of collecting, ranking, linking, and displaying knowledge determines what we consider to be good, true, valuable, and relevant” (7).

            Furthermore, Google’s massive collection of information has put our privacy at the whims of Google. Vaidhyanathan argues that Google will make us behave in a manner similar as to under Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, where the possibility that we might be watched will alter our behavior to fit in with that which we think is expected of us. Only instead of a single viewer at the center of the Panopticon, or simply Google’s employees, we will soon fear the entire world is at the center of this Panopticon.

            Great Britain currently has 14.2 million security cameras set up right now, or one for every fourteen residents. While this is somewhat frightening in an Orwellian sense, what is scarier is what is to come. If Google Glass catches on and becomes widespread, everyone will have a camera strapped to there head at all times. Conceivable, there could come a time where we might never know whether we’re being recorded. The risk of this is our potential to all have a Panopticon-style of thinking, which could result in Orwell’s concept of “group think.”