The Googlization of our lives

From Eurozine

"Search is the way we now live. With the dramatic increase of accessed information, we have become hooked on retrieval tools." However, argues net critic Geert Lovink, the "Googlization of our lives" will continue for as long as we "remain obsessed with the diminishing quality of the answers to our queries -- and not with the underlying problem, namely the poor quality of our education and the diminishing ability to think in a critical way."

While the online flood of disinformation is a result of the absence of an editorial principle, it is not "up to any editor or coder to decide for us what is and what is not nonsense. This should be a distributed effort, embedded in a culture that facilitates and respects difference of opinion. We should praise the richness and make new search techniques part of our general culture."

"As long as the gap between new media culture and major governing, private and cultural institutions is reproduced, a thriving technological culture will not be established. [...] Besides imagination, collective will and a good dose of creativity, Europeans could mobilize their unique quality to grumble into a productive form of negativity. The collective passion for reflection and critique could be used to overcome the outsider syndrome many feel in their assigned role as mere users and consumers."

It is time to stop searching and start questioning.

Geert Lovink
The society of the query and the Googlization of our lives
A tribute to Joseph Weizenbaum
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-09-05-lovink-en.html