Google and the World Brain
Further to our discussion in the class about the documentary of the BBC “ Google and the World Brian”, we decided to put this subject in the blog to extend our discussion and go further through the questions that we have been given by the teacher
: The following is a conclusion for the points that we agreed about
Google vision in this project seems to be positive, that it is apparently to empower people to take decision about their life by give them unlimited access to the knowledge. However, we were all in agreement that google work to (knew everything) by maps, book, people’s personal information…etc, make goole activities and projects are suspicious and terrifying and could be used negatively.
About the advantage of this technology, we are in agreement that the main aim for google is to invest money from
digital books.
,The main criticism over this project is related to copyrights issues and it is arising a question about "ownership "of knowledge
we agree that is not all the knowledge of the world as it is impossible to google to" know everything”.We are in the age of information’s explosion. The knowledge is arising quickly and hundreds if not thousand of books are published every years in different languages.
-In terms of the accessibility of 'The World Brain' we are in agreement that not all the people in the world will benefit from it because it would be limited for those who have access to the internet. Additionally, google does not allowed all pages of the books for free.
-The key technology of ‘ world brain’ is scanning beside the internet and computing
-The core idea of this technology ( digital books ) is not new it have been used in the library for long time. Same project also taken place in China.
Additionally, despite of the importance of this technology in making the access to knowledge much easier, speared it wider,and protect it from lost, this huge amount of information make it higher likely to google serving and achieving its agenda and interests as one of the speaker in the film speak about. From what I understand from decentralisation concept, I think google, apple, Microsoft ..all parts of US body.
ReplyDeleteAlthough that this idea of digital book is not new, in my opinion the huge amount of books that have been copy to digital form or as what its called “ mass digitalisation” is a unique. Google scanned 10 million book beside the big number of scanning centre that it established. Additionally, I can see that goole will develop this project and benefit from the technology of google translation by scanning. As result this book could be available in different languages in the near future.
Thank you for filling me in Atlal! My reaction to this is rather sceptical. I don't believe Google have altruistic intentions (see my post on the Google translation app). As we have discussed, knowledge is power, and with this project Google are, as you say, centralising knowledge. This means eventually they will be able to control access to knowledge, and this will relate to money. So, yes it will actually turn us back to the idea of knowledge being the preserve of the privileged. Can you imagine what it would be like if you could only look at websites that you had paid subscriptions to? Tim Berners Lee's philosophy about the internet, was that he believed that it should be used freely by all humanity. He hasn't made a penny from his creation, and doesn't want to.
ReplyDeleteIt can not be denied that Google give persons an enormous convenience by the tremendous ' Digital Library'. This library is much bigger than any physical library and it is easy for every person to visit it, because it was told that , at the beginning of the video, the largest library in Harvard is unavailable to the ordinary people except its own staff and students. So the google did well in this aspect in my perspective. I don't like to go to library to find book which I need for my essay and then I should act like a man to carry all the heavy stuffs back. But sometimes, anyway, I have no choice, but become a porter because of the limits of Google which is that we can find the book on google but we can not access to the content. Using Google is not only because of the convenience, but also we can get the information for free, nevertheless, some part of the google, such as Google Scholar, should be paid. It's hard to say this should be or not, because the user want everything is free, but the author should be paid for the copy right.
ReplyDeleteBesides the most impressive part is that he told that most countries in the world can use Google except China. And he talked about another digital product Baidu which is the Chinese Google. To protect our own production and market shares, the government refuse many world digital platforms to be available in China, such as Google, Dropbox, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and so on, because we have Baidu, Baiduyun, Youku, Renren, Weibo instead. All these Chinese digital platforms are almost 90% the same as those before. There is another effect that all kinds of information are available on world digital platform including those which the Chinese government don't want us to know, so cutting off the contact can keep those information from the citizen.
After watching a video about Google,i want to talk something about Baidu,a searching engine similar to Google in China,and also mention Baidu in the video.
ReplyDeleteMay be we will find out our minds or ideas getting close because we can find anythings or search whatever we want to know through Baidu.This situation has two sides.
On the one hand,it can help people to expand their knowledge and broaden their horizons.For example,if a chinese want to konw more about the history of UK,he can skim the pages from Baidu Wenku,such like Google Scholar.Baidu pays for some organizations to scan the real books and then upload to Baidu Wenku.It provide a platform for everyone to konw what they want to konw or learn.
On the other hand,people can know others ideas more easily,it will cause many bad situations.For instance,people will not want to think more about the things that they want to know,they just plagiarize others ideas and their minds will not innovate anymore.
So we have to face squarely about these omnipotence searching engines.If we can make good use of them,they will help us to go further.