The Sentient Search Engine

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.