Dangers of Our Google Addiction
Google wants to develop AI to better interpret our commands. And they've already begun to advertise and present pages and content based upon your history, in order to expose you to things you're interested in. The problem with these kinds of system is that they keep individuals surfing the web from being exposed to new things; they keep people boxed in by their history and their interests. Reading a newspaper used to a survey of everything important that happened in a day; now it's a list of articles similar to articles you read yesterday. And while this is convenient to a certain extent, it will further isolate the members of an already isolating globalized world. Sure, the internet provides us with opportunities to connect with other people based upon these interests. But, while many people claim that web communities based upon interest are superior to communities of geographic accident, human beings still have bodies; our social needs still compel us to seek out physically near human beings. Further, our world has been shrinking for some time, and culture has become global. Japan has a huge rap scene; Americans love German trance DJs. The problem with this is that it stifles local culture; it homogenizes us. And Google facilitates that. With an easy-to-use internet at our fingertips, it's easy to join into cultural events taking place halfway around the world. Culture can become massive, popularized and depersonalized. Britney Spear's trials and tribulations can become global news. I'm not saying that Google's ad content related to search terms is going to destroy human culture; I'm saying that there are seeds of such a process in the strategies they are employing, and we should be wary. If Google develops AI, it may become more convenient to live on the web in a world regulated by this intelligence and, while that may "parallel the discovery of fire," as to blogger Memepunk said, we should probably remember that fire burns stuff down as well as cooks food.