Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago.”1 C. K.’s point is that when we become habituated to the amazing technological achievements of recent years, we forget to be thrilled and amazed. We lose our sense of wonder. We take brilliance for granted, and so we ignore the human elements of fortitude, creativity, and intelligence that underlie so many tools we use every day. The dynamic of consumer expectations has been running at such high speeds for so many years that we become frustrated with devices and services (such as slow computer processors and Internet access) that did not even exist a few years ago.
This constant, insatiable hunger is sharpened by constant pressure on firms to expand markets and revenue, as well as by a widespread lack of historical perspective on technological change. But at its root is the black box of technological design. Although consumers and citizens are invited to be dazzled by the interface, the results, and the convenience of a technology, they are rarely invited in to view how it works. Because we cannot see inside the box, it’s difficult to appreciate the craft, skill, risk, and brilliance of devices as common as an iPod or a continuously variable transmission in an automobile.
This chapter examines some of the cultural assumptions that underlie the enthusiastic reception of Google and our willingness to trust the company with information about us. First, the chapter examines how we discovered and celebrated Google in its early years and the values that it built on to earn our trust. Then it explores the values that have characterized Google’s practices and people.
Google’s first brilliant innovation was, of course, its search algorithm. Its second was the auction system for placing advertisements, which generates tremendous revenue for the company. But a close third is the way that Google measures us and builds its systems and services to indulge our desires and weaknesses. Google works for us because it seems to read our minds—and, in a way, it does. It guesses what you might want to see based on requests that you and others like you have already expressed. You can type a vague term into the search query box, not knowing exactly how to phrase your desire, and Google will most likely return a remarkably appropriate list of things you might want. Moreover, Google conditions us to accept and believe that that list does in fact deliver what we want. The suggestive power of Google Web Search, made explicit by the drop-down list of choices that appears when we start typing, is the magic that hooks us. In many ways Google has measured and understood us better than we have assessed ourselves.
Google works so well, so simply, and so fast that it inspires trust and faith in its users. As the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”2 And of course trust in magic, or suspension of disbelief, is a central part of the process of embracing the deific. That’s why so much of what we say and write about the experience of Google sounds vaguely religious. It sure looks like magic from this desk chair. I send a string of text out into the ether, and less than a second later the glowing screen in front of me offers a list of answers. It’s not quite an abundance; that would be overwhelming. It’s a manageable set of choices—just enough to give me a sense of autonomy over my next move but not too many to paralyze me. If I am shopping for shoes, there is little spiritual about the process. But if I am searching for connection, affirmation, guidance, even directions, the interactions I have with this semi-intelligent system (and all the intelligent beings to whom it can connect) can verge on the spiritual. If I am seeking something meaningful, Google seems to help me find meaning.
If you are a lonely Muslim boy growing up in Berlin, offended by the spiritual poverty and sexual depravity you perceive around you, then Google can connect you with a community that understands. If you are gay young woman growing up in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, Google could be the first place you go to seek affirmation and advice. If you are a commodities trader in the City of London, you might feel a rush of adrenaline and testosterone as you use Google to sift through business news and rumors. We all Google our various gods, no matter what we worship or how worthy those gods are of our devotion. And now we expect nothing less than a meaningful response. Google’s success is a function of our collective cultural weaknesses, and it in turn encourages them by ratcheting up our expectations.
As Google vice president Marissa Mayer explained during her 2008 keynote speech at a software developers’ conference, one of the most significant things that Google discovered in its early user studies was that speed mattered more than anything else in generating a “positive user experience.” This fact has driven Google to push the Internet industry for faster broadband service, create faster-running Web applications, and invest in an expensive, complicated, and powerful infrastructure to conduct Google’s core activity: copying and searching the World Wide Web. “Users really care about speed,” Mayer told developers. “They respond to speed. As the web gets faster, as Google gets faster, people search more.”3 More searching yields more advertising links displayed, more advertising links clicked, and more revenue for Google’s advertising clients and Google itself. Users clearly reward the speed and the quality of search results.
Under the hood, Google runs an astounding set of machines and brilliant code. Mayer explained that every time someone types a simple query into the empty search box on the blank Google home page, that query fires up between 700 and 1,000 separate computers in several huge data centers around the United States. These computers generate 5 million search results by scanning indexes and previous search queries in a mere .16 seconds.4
To Google users, this amazing process is invisible. Making users wise to its power is not a priority of the company: quite the opposite. “It’s very, very complicated technology, but behind a very simple interface,” Mayer said. “We think that that’s the best way to do things. Our users don’t need to understand how complicated the technology and the development work that happens behind this is. What they do need to understand is that they can just go to a box, type what they want, and get answers.”5
If Google users were to understand or appreciate the scale and complexity of Google’s operation, their expectations for magical results might be tempered, their appreciation for human work and ingenuity bolstered, and their abilities to use the tools enhanced. Such changes would not benefit Google now, as it has bet the future of the company on being bigger, faster, better, and more embedded in the constant collective consciousness of human beings than any commercial firm in history. And by promoting its operations as almost magical, Google is not doing anything wrong. Its apparent omnipresence and omnipotence are merely functions of its abilities to capitalize on our weaknesses and desires, cravings, and curiosities.
Faith in Google is dangerous because it increases our appetite for goods, services, information, amusement, distraction, and efficiency. We are addicted to speed and convenience for the sake of speed and convenience. Google rewards us for our desires for immediate gratification at no apparent cost to us. There is nothing wrong with immediate gratification per se; it’s certainly better than no gratification. Immediacy should not, however, be an end in itself. And providing immediate gratification draped in a cloak of corporate benevolence is bad faith.
THE TECHNO-FUNDAMENTALIST ESCHATOLOGY
Google spreads an eschatological ideology: a belief in fulfillment of prophecy. Those who profess eschatologies are uninterested in origin stories or accounts of miracles: instead, they look ahead. Eschatology is the study of the ultimate destiny of humanity. For Google, that destiny involves the organization and universal accessibility of the world’s information. The road to that destiny is paved with the ideal expressions of techno-fundamentalism. Google believes that the constant application of advanced information technologies—algorithms, computer code, high-speed networks, and massively powerful servers—will solve many, if not all, human problems.
No firm operates independently of the culture in which it operates. Industry does not drive history any more than history drives industry. To grasp the full significance of a particular firm or institution, we must consider its place in culture and society—the work it does and the beliefs that value and enable that
