Google runs the world

Beyonce might say it’s girls, but I say it’s Google.

In his bestselling book “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam, professor of public policy at Harvard University, cites screen time as one of the leading causes of a decline in social connectedness in this country since the 1960s.

The book was written in 2000, long before the iPhone and devices like it devoured our attention even further.

I don’t know if I necessarily agree with Putnam that there is something fundamentally inferior about the social connections electronic interactions create, but I do think there’s an important difference to point out.

When we have traditional social contact, there’s only you and me and our words and perhaps an activity. But when communities interact electronically, there’s an
intermediary.

Companies like Google, Apple and Facebook are the invisible messengers that carry this social contact from my phone to yours. Invisible as they are, it’s very easy to forget they are participating in that interaction.

Sometimes that interaction is a price of admission. Most everyone knows, and at least implicitly has come to terms with the fact, that Facebook uses your personal information and interactions to advertise to you.

Facebook may be monetarily free, but we still “pay” with our privacy to use it.
In fact, privacy seems to be the currency of the modern day. If you want an iPhone, you have to be willing to let Apple track your locations.

If you want to use Facebook or Google, information about you and what you click on most is going to be pimped out.

These are the gatekeepers of information in the information age, and the toll must be paid.

Google recently blocked access in certain countries to the YouTube video mocking the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It’s when we are faced with situations like this that our lack of privacy begins to feel fishy.

When that invisible social intermediary is already there, and people are in real danger, it seems almost irresponsible for a company like Google not to remove access to that material.

But the implied message of this action to the protesters is that violence is a viable means of affecting change.

Are we satisfied with Google’s decision in this case?

Do we trust them and companies like them to responsibly make these social decisions for us in the future?

Most importantly, do we have any choice? Those are questions to which I don’t really have any answers yet.

But what worries me most? I haven’t heard very many people asking them.

­— drlreed@indiana.edu