Vaidhyanathan and the Googlization of everything

Once research took painstaking effort and observation. Now a few clicks and a wealth of information pops up. What if in the future, nothing exists unless it can be Googled?

I discovered this blog through one of my web link adventures. It’s timely, considering how much Google permeates my life lately. (See my 9/20 and 10/26 posts about Google Book Search, and Google and the University of Illinois.) This site, http://www.googlizationofeverything.com/ is identified as “a book in progress” by Siva Vaidhyanathan, a historian, author and media scholar at the University of Virginia. Between this web site, and his main one at http://www.sivacracy.net/ , there is a lot of good reading and thought-provoking commentary.

Vaidhyanathan’s blog and future book on Googlization looks at the impact of Google on our lives now and in the future. Ultimately, the book will answer the following questions:

• What does the world look like through the lens of Google?


• How is Google's ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of knowledge?


• How has the corporation altered the rules and practices that govern other companies, institutions, and states? (Vaidhyanathan, 2007).

The project is in conjunction with the Institute for the Future of the Book which is another web site that will happily occupy me for hours, and will probably get its own posting later.