GOOGLEZON, OR: HOW I WASTED MY EVENING

We don't really surf anymore, not like in the mid-to-late 1990s when we had time to simply explore the Internet (at least for those of us who didn't sign on until 1997). I remember a classroom debate with the proprietor of the panoply of peculiarities at laurabush.info about whether this Internet thing would "catch on." That debate, of course, isn't over &mdash as I'll get to shortly.

So, here's the result of some deliberate surfing of Google, technology news sites and web-head blogs -- not to mention taking up some recommendations via instant messenger:

1] I haven't said so before, but I really like these "Listed on NASDAQ" commercials. I first remember seeing them almost exactly on September 11, 2001. At a time when I needed something that celebrated the American ideals of forward-thinking, enterprise and originality, there it was. And it features an iconic symbol of New York, too boot. A good deal of this appreciation owes to the score: an inspiring, compellingly tempoed composition that complements well the theme of visionaries and their innovative companies. Appreciation for the other half is mostly deserved, though I certainly have my complaints about all of them. They're not as good now as the earliest ones — I presume "Starbucks! Dell! Microsoft!" was the first — but I'm glad they're still around.

2] Mahir Cagri, Hamster Dance, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, Jib Jab, We Like The Moon and countless others¹ have passed by link-of-email and glimpse-of-television (and even word-of-mouth) since the Internet showed up, and now here's something I found on an English-language Scandanavian blog: a history of the Internet from the future in the form of a Flash movie. I haven't seen it linked to on the popular blogs (assuming we assume those are the same blogs) but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. It leads with the somewhat misleading teaser: "In the year 2014, The New York Times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned. What has happened to the news? And What is EPIC?"

Not mentioned in there is the central conceit — Google and Amazon merge, they use exensive search technology to create personalized news and information (the term not used, but apt is "narrowcasting") — at first seems like a commercial for Google (and other companies) but then clearly reveals itself to be a message to the company itself: it would be really awesome if you did THIS.

In fact, at times it sounds an awful lot like those NASDAQ ads, mentioning Amazon, Google, Blogger, Friendster, Microsoft, Sony, Philips, and others in quick succession. The first prognostication is that Google, "awash in cash" after going public, buys TiVo. Then they team up with Amazon and create something approximating what Adam Smith described as "perfect information." Eventually it renders human-written news organizations irrelevant, as everyone receives news and information personalized. The climax is when the NYT takes their case to the Supreme Court, and loses.

Not mentioned is what really becomes of the Times afterward. I suppose it becomes a second-tier media source, only read by an aging demographic. It also doesn't say what happens to newspapers' opinion sections, which in the face of all this Whigish futurism I must say could surely not be created by algorithms … or is at least unlikely by 2014. It is implied that their influence wanes — and if you read the Times' opinion columns, you'd probably guess that it would. And of course Blogger is a big part of the story — everyone who wants to be is a creator of information. And in according to this vision, they get paid for it, too (where's Soulseek and BitTorrent in all this?).

Plus, as regular readers of this blog know, I think Google News needs a lot of work. And in this context, so does Amazon's recommendation scheme. For its current uses I don't have much complaint, but if it's supposed to do all that's predicted, it needs a lot of work.

And if we're going to talk about the collective wisdom of the Internet, we still have to realize that organized interests not everybody agrees with will continue to leverage influence beyond what critics of the mainstream media thinks will be alleviated by the freer flow of information. Citing the most benign example I can think of, do all three "Lord of The Rings" movies really belong in the top ten all-tim movies, as the members of the IMDb would have it?

It's clearly written by someone(s) with libertarian leanings — two California journalists, it turns out — who probably have Virginia Postrel's "The Future And Its Enemies" on their bookshelves². At Poynter, one apparently describes his education as having "majored in economics and minored in Nintendo." If he hasn't read any Neal Stephenson, he probably should.

As for the dubious identities of the writers/editors of the movie, this blog post (get some permalinks, it's the 2000s already!) identifies the video's director/producer, "Evan Emerson." as a collective pseudonym:

[T]wo California-based journalists, Robin Sloan (Sacramento Bee) and Matt Thompson (INdTV) did the piece. INdTV is the San Francisco based start up network headed by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt. The Evan Emerson piece talks about the obsolescence of news, but INdTV has strong connections to and is funded by people and groups including Rob Glaser of Real Networks, Steve Jobs of Apple, and the Googleoids. They're planning to ride the media obsolescence tsunami, not get swept under by it.

If the "they" of the final sentence refers to Sloan and Thompson, I certainly agree. If they mean Glaser, Jobs and myriad "Googleoids," I think I'd like some evidence before making the assumption that this is their brainchild.

That said, "GoogleZon" and its combination logo is pretty funny. So is "Newsbotster." And the anti-NYT humor is dry (if intended) and snicker-worthy. It does sort of forget about Microsoft at the end (also probably intended). Having already mentioned originality, I must add that I like the EPIC logo, the shadow of which reads E[PI]C³. And this blog post is probably correct about the more-realistic impact of such technologies (though it does the "GoogleZon" joke wrong). It also links to some real-life projects that point in the same direction. (Speaking of future technologies, here are a couple WMVs (what else?) showcasing Microsoft's long-awaited "Longhorn" project. Based on what I saw elsewhere (thanks to Google, of course), it seems to be a big improvement on XP, but I hope you can turn off the jiggling windows.)

Also not mentioned: Skynet! When this thing becomes self-aware, it might make computers at the Pentagon launch our nukes on the Russkies! (Or in the future where this takes place, maybe North Korea or Iran!)

3] God, this thing is weird. At the very least someone should get Toxic the Machine AKA Bob Barker to do album covers.

As a testament to the aforementioned media revolution — which anyway doesn't appear to be televised — I copied, pasted and translated the introductory text from the German-language message board I found it on:

zur abwechslung mal widder was sinnloses, wobei misch die Musik langsam gefällt

Or, as Babelfish attempts:

to the alternation times more widder which senseless, whereby mix the music slowly pleases

Which doesn't make literal sense but actually is a much better summary than I could write. Thanks, algorithms!

4] As I started to pound out the first draft of this post, I was watching two of General Electric's top news personalities conduct an interview — Tom Brokaw asking Tim Russert a lot of questions about "Big Russ." If you follow Washington-based news, you've certainly heard about "Big Russ" — viz., Russert's putatively insightful, good-natured and beloved father. Frankly, either one of these two could interview the other. Sort of like James Spader and Rob Lowe trading parts before shooting "Bad Influence."

5] If you ask me, Boobah Zone is the trippiest website on the whole World Wide Web. It's not like being on acid; it's like what you were always told acid would be like.

Hey, that was fun!
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¹Speaking of countless others, here is the hypnotic "We Love The Chocolate." Honest to God, the first time I looked at this, I let it run. In fact, as of this late evening posting time, it's still playing in the background.

² Among said others, Reason Magazine.

³ Am I wrong or is there no special character for the symbol representing 3.14159265…?