Our PCs at work started acting oddly “google-wise”. EVERY site was listed as harmful to the computer! I thought one of my coleagues attempts at diagnosis produced especially amusing results. Of course I may be biased…
Thing #17 in CML’s Learn & Play program is to work with Web Applications like Google Docs. Since I have experience with these, I won’t get too info what I did. Basically I created a doc, and shared it with myself (using my work email) so I could re-familiarize myself with the process. I also published it to share it with the world!
The implications of things like Google Docs are tremendous. You never have to worry about leaving your report behind again (or spreadsheet, or presentation…). One can also easily collaborate on a document from a distance and even make presentations with the presentations component!
Libraries could get a lot out of this. We Google Docs affords a great deal of flexibility for transferring and sharing documents. I personally don’t think it replaces Productivity software on one’s PC (the internet does experience outages, from time to time). I imagine the utility would go up for smaller libraries that may not have the software and network resources that CML enjoys.
On the other hand, there are some more fearful implications that libraries should heed. If everyone switches over to Google Documents (as Google hopes) for all their routine document creation needs. Think of the power this gives Google, a for profit corporation. They would literally control everyone’s information. I probably sound like some sort of survivalist nut, but this makes me personally and professionally…uncomfortable. All the reports we write, the data we collect, and the presentations we make would be stored on servers owned by Google. We would be trusting Google to keep their fingers out and to keep prying eyes away. If you can trust them, you’re a better person than me.
Its not that I think Google’s a bad company (now anyway), its just that I don’t really think its a good idea to keep all that information quite that centralized. Maybe I’m just being a cranky old librarian.
Google is 10 years old today, having been incorporated on September 7, 1998.
As a librarian, I’m of two minds about this milestone. On the one hand its something to celebrate. Google has opened up the web to millions of people and provided tools that make the modern world of information work and more enjoyable. Google professes an open-source “do no evil” worldview that is easy to embrace.
On the other hand, Google’s efforts to simplify the web for the rest of us have come at a cost. The importance of quality information and idea of responsible use of information has been largely gone out the window by the instant-gratification, anonymous Google world.
Now everything’s “on” Google, they’re a safe source right? Well no, because everything isn’t accessible through Google, and anything that is isn’t “on” Google, just made accessible through it. Google is a means of locating, and more recently, creating information. It doesn’t own the information or stand by anything one finds on it, that’s the creator.
Think of it this way. Google is an amoral, emotionally detached Librarian that doesn’t really care if its giving you the right answer to your question. A Librarian that cares more about information than people. (Flesh and blood Librarians like this exist as well unfortunately, though I haven’t met any). If a warehouse full of servers caught fire, our Librarian, Miss Google, would risk her life to rescue as many servers she could and leave the employees to burn and die. After all, data is worth more than lives, right?
Although it at times can be a bit scary, you can’t deny that Google is a force to be reckoned with in the modern world. We just need people around who understand how information “works” well enough to make sure Google stays in line.
Now who could we get to do that job? I wonder…
