(Above: eek, the bees is coming, or is it the ants?)
There's only one question to be asked about Paul Sheehan, after his something old, something borrowed, something blue column under the header In Google we trust: our new faith.
Is he a proselytizer for the faith? Is he an active missionary for the new religion?
Because after borrowing Matt MacPherson's nine proofs that Google is god, he doesn't link to the Googlist faith.
The only decent way to get there is to use Google. By typing in the names cited by Sheehan. That's as canny a way of harvesting lost souls as has been invented, and yes it conforms to the Google god's commandments and the googlist creed.
Worse, Sheehan puts up a link to his favorite video, and then he goes into his favorite rant about how it's all to do with the wisdom of the crowds:
... what makes this video so special? Why and how would a group of unknowns prompt a global response? Answer: the wisdom of crowds.
The entire viral process, where something of great quality and humanity is able to find a global audience despite humble origins, is vindicated by a fascinating book, The Wisdom of Crowds, written in 2002 by James Surowiecki, the economics correspondent of The New Yorker.
He argues that large groups hold a collective wisdom. They are always smarter than individual experts at solving problems, or even anticipating the future. His thesis is counter-intuitive, because it has always been assumed that crowds gravitate towards the mean, the mediocre middle.
No, says Surowiecki, who studied popular culture, psychology, mass marketing, artificial intelligence, military history, game theory and even ant biology in preparing the book. ''If you have a factual question, the best way to get a consistently good answer is to ask a group. They are also surprisingly good at solving problems.
''Experts, no matter how smart, only have limited amounts of information. They also have biases. It's very rare that one person can know more than a large group of people.''
Not that large groups need to agree, or are necessarily wise. ''The wisdom of crowds isn't about consensus,'' he says. ''You can't find collective wisdom via compromise. The best group decisions come from lots of independent individual decisions.''
Well I guess that explains the great depression, two world wars, endless minor wars, sundry dictators, stupid theocratic states, global financial crises, and a preference for spending endless zillions on armaments rather than tackling the problems facing large crowds all over the earth. It's all to do with the wisdom of the crowds.
Which brings us back to Google. It has been able to harness the wisdom of crowds, the collective effort of many people acting independently of each other, on a scale never seen before.
Because of Google, our species' capacity and need for co-operation is evolving into a new and higher phrase of social organisation. We appear to be becoming more like a giant ant colony, a multitude of individuals with a collective brain, and a single wellspring, a super-entity which evokes power, action and belief. It has a name. We call it Google.
Which brings us back to Google. It has been able to harness the wisdom of crowds, the collective effort of many people acting independently of each other, on a scale never seen before.
Because of Google, our species' capacity and need for co-operation is evolving into a new and higher phrase of social organisation. We appear to be becoming more like a giant ant colony, a multitude of individuals with a collective brain, and a single wellspring, a super-entity which evokes power, action and belief. It has a name. We call it Google.
The need for co-operation? What, say on the subject of global warming, with the climate sceptics shouting from the tree tops that it's all a fake and a fraud (and Sheehan welcoming Ian Plimer like he's the messiah), sowing discord and disbelief, while on the other side the believers shout and urge us on with hysterical fear? If this is the wisdom of the crowd as shoved around the world on the intertubes, give me the insanity of the masses. All babbling and blurbing and blogging at once in a crescendo of voices, with no one to make sense of it all, an incoherent rabble, ranting and railing at the way they have the truth and the light but no one's listening to them (and yes indeedy folks I do have the way forward, but for that you need to send me a dollar in a plain brown envelope).
As for the ant colony metaphor, do I suddenly hear the X-Files' theme ringing in my ears? We're evolving and becoming a giant ant colony because of Google? Suddenly I can chat on the web and look up things in Mandarin?
The Russians are my friend, because they send me files full of American content? We've developed a collective brain and a single wellspring and it's called Google?
Well sadly the Google god has yet to sort out the Tower of Babel, meaning neither it nor Babel Fish can produce decent results, except "Sox is my hole, please it stitch" when confronted by obscurantist German on a porn site. (okay I made that up, but you've been there and done that).
And Bill Gates won't be pleased about any of this. Bing pronounced dead on arrival by the mighty Sheehan? Bing? (just to save you googling up the rival religion, just like it's better not to cross the street, and go from a Catholic church into a protestant one).
Guess all that nonsense about it getting a share of the marketplace was just spin (Bing Keeps Rising).
Well all said and done, and despite Sheehan's crazed metaphysical musings, Google is just a search engine, the best going around at the moment, but twenty years ago the intertubes was just getting going, and who knows where it will be in twenty more years.
And while Wolfram Alpha and similar attempts at intelligent agency search engines have for the moment entered the market with a dull thud rather than a satisfying splash (Wolfram Alpha here), there's plenty of people out there planning and scheming to start a schism, religious warfare, the crusades, whatever, and knock Google off.
Does Sheehan have any idea of the nonsense he's spouting, about as mystical as the gibberish you can get from a Catholic when you back them into a corner and ask them to explain transubstantiation and how they feel about eating meat and drinking blood like a cannibal? (the last one thought it was a metaphor, failing to understand that through mystical transformation you're actually munching on Christ).
It's almost enough to make me a Googlist, a deep believer, and sure enough the Church of Google does have an answer:
2. Thou shalt not build thy own commercial-free Search Engine, for I am a jealous Engine, bringing law suits and plagues against the fathers of the children unto the third and fourth generations.
3. Thou shalt not use Google as a verb to mean the use of any lesser Search Engine.
4. Thou shalt remember each passing day and use thy time as an opportunity to gain knowledge of the unknown.
5. Thou shalt honor thy fellow humans, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or race, for each has invaluable experience and knowledge to contribute toward humankind.
6. Thou shalt not misspell whilst praying to me.
7. Thou shalt not hotlink.
8. Thou shalt not plagiarise or take undue credit for other's work.
9. Thou shalt not use reciprocal links nor link farms, for I am a vengeful but fair engine and will diminish thy PageRank. The Google Dance shall cometh.
10. Thou shalt not manipulate Search Results. Search Engine Optimization is but the work of Microsoft.
Well actually it's also the work of SEO's and we have one of that satanic brood in the family. No wonder I'm not a believer. Because there's a dark side to the faith (why not wiki on search engine optimization if you want a break from Sheehan cant).
There, I've filled up a piece with another's work, but fair's fair, and here's the link to Googlism and the Church of Google. It's a hell of a lot funnier than Sheehan, and knowing, so why not join the new world order.
Happily the link means you don't have to use google, just your browser, and golly are there a multitude of faiths in that corner of the intertubes. Heresies and non-believers and an intertubes virtual world full of the same kind discombobulation as the real world. Will there ever be a unified bee hive, run by the black helicopter people?
But I suppose it's better to have that faith than think the intertubes are making our brains a kind of oozy plastic. But let's save Susan Greenfield for another loon day ...
(Below: a screen cap of Googlism as a way of warning you of the dangers you might encounter, you know ant colonies and cosmic beehives and collective thinking that makes 1984 seem like so yesterday).
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