Google and the Crazy Land

So let me tell you about Google.

If there’s anything that history should have taught us, it’s that the silver-tongued holier-than-thou talking heads have always had it in for the common man.  Their professions of ‘Goodness’ ought to be your first clue.

(As for me – I’m a hateful alcoholic, who laughs at crying children, cheers at cop funerals, and regularly flips off old ladies in traffic.  You can trust me.)

Now folks, let me ask you something; let’s say that you have a new neighbour move in next door.  He happens to be wearing a shirt that says “I raped a goat, but she had it coming.”  Tell me now, would you offer this man a beer?

Fuck yes you would!

Now, what if he’d been wearing a shirt that said “I have NEVER drowned a bag of kittens, ESPECIALLY not while using the dying remains of a ferret as a fleshlight“?  Within six hours you and Dr Dre would be watching his place burn to the ground, with a can of gas and hand full of matches.  Don’t worry.  Nobody’ll find out.

But then Google comes along, chanting their “Do No Evil” mantra, and people just decide to believe the Smiling Man this time – Information wants to be Free, amirite?

“Do No Evil” has got to be the most Poisonous and Evil mandate that our benevolent corporate masters have ever come up with.  And yet somehow it works.  People get upset over Facebook – last Spring they tried to promote a Quit Facebook Day – but just like any Black Block ‘Anarchist’ attacking a journalist, they’re just fiddling with the thermostat while ignoring the inferno.

You see, Mark Zuckerberg is more-or-less open about being a pervy, voyeuristic, pig fucker.  Yes, yes, we’re his product, not his customer – it’s nothing but a scam to aggregate data on all us proles so they can market more useless Widgets and DooDads to us, the generation of Consumer Whores.  But you know what?  All my old buddies from University are on there; and hell, worse case scenario is I start getting spam that actually interests me.

(Okay, so there is the question of government databases predicting my every movement and political belief based solely upon my date of birth, race, and favourite flavour of Ice Cream – but that’s why the art of lying on forms was created.)

Now as for Google – that’s where we gotta start worrying.  And it ain’t just the motto.

Facebook exploits the stupid in exchange for shiny baubles – the Farmvilles and Mafia wars – but it only takes what you let it take from you.  On the scale of Monstrous Abnomalities it’s no worse than the poisoned apples that Disney sells at their theme parks (it’s either poisoned apples, or more wars, if we’re going to thin-out the lower classes).  But Google – and Google Books – and Google Cache – and Google Mail – are an all-encompassing game-changer, a Being which knows everything, can use anything, and defacto owns it unless a RIAA complaint is filed- and even then it’ll be back online within six weeks.

Quick Question – why were copyright laws developed in the first place?  No, I’m not talking about that corporate-sponsored ACTA horseshit; I mean the original idea.

The Answer is that they were institued to protect authors – not from Pirates – but from unscrupulous Publishing Labels.

What exactly do you think Google is?

Corporations are Strange Creatures – the aggregate intelligence of several thousand human beings, lacking consciousness, and having a Bizarro Attitude towards money.  A corporation that controls information is something ten times as Weird.  But it is the Way Things Are Now – and any arguments to the contrary are at best a Discredited Conspiracy Theory, at worst they’re a Quixotic Quest against Good People who are actually On Your Side.

Evil?  Without a doubt.  Inevitable?  Probably.  Interesting?  Hell, this is more Interesting than a Chinese Proverb.

Does Google Know that you Know that they Know?  That is the Question.