
Welcome to Google Island - scholia
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/on-google-island/
======
ender7
(disclaimer: I work for Google. My words are not theirs)

At first I thought "oh. Google fan fiction. This is what we have come to."
After a moment, though, I realized that this article isn't really any
different from the other hyperventilating blog posts that have appeared all
over HN recently. I'm not saying that these aren't important topics to
discuss, but everything I've read recently has come off as a prurient privacy
daydream. Whether it's people writing polemic screeds about Glass despite
knowing nothing about how the devices actually work (which they make up for by
imagining a host of capabilities and features that it doesn't have), or things
like this that manufacture a Lovecraftian monstrosity that has as much in
common with the Google of today as a pineapple, they're not really saying
anything interesting. Every argument is trivial to win if you first convert
your opponent into Mecha-Hitler.

Is privacy a central, unsolved challenge for the next decade? Yes. On the one
hand Google (and Apple and Amazon and ... ) need to innovate, or we'll soon
see posts on HN describing how "Search has stagnated" and "Google is done
for". Keyword search isn't good enough anymore, but to do anything more you
need to start understanding the user's context. The "Star Trek computer"
interface that everyone wants can't function if it doesn't have a sense of the
world and the person it's talking to. I would love it if there was a
distributed way for people to provide this information without having it live
in a centralized datacenter somewhere. Sadly, no one's really talking about
that.

(there's an equally interesting discussion to be had regarding public privacy
and cameras, but villifying Glass isn't going to make that problem go away.)

~~~
robterrell
_The "Star Trek computer" interface that everyone wants can't function if it
doesn't have a sense of the world and the person it's talking to. I would love
it if there was a distributed way for people to provide this information
without having it live in a centralized datacenter somewhere._

That makes sense. Why can't we have both? If Google needs to store all my
context data off in the cloud somewhere, why not absolutely guarantee that no
one will get my data without my permission or a court order? And then earn my
trust by defending my right to data privacy?

~~~
declan
Google has done just that:

1\. When DOJ sent Google a subpoena for search logs, Google fought it in
court, while Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL did not: [http://news.cnet.com/FAQ-
What-does-the-Google-subpoena-mean/...](http://news.cnet.com/FAQ-What-does-
the-Google-subpoena-mean/2100-1029_3-6029042.html)

2\. Google is lobbying to change federal law to require search warrants backed
by probable cause and signed by a judge for stored cloud email (and Google
Drive, Dropbox, Flickr, etc.) files, a privacy protection opposed by the Obama
DOJ: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20123710-281/google-
facebo...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20123710-281/google-facebook-go-
retro-in-push-to-update-1986-privacy-law/)

3\. Google began requiring police to obtain search warrants for email after
the Warshak decision nationally, even though it was binding only in a few
states. So did (from memory) Facebook and Microsoft.

4\. Google became the first tech company to disclose information about FBI
warrantless data acquisition through NSLs in March, and in April became the
first tech company to challenge their legality in court:
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57572634-83/google-
offers-d...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57572634-83/google-offers-data-
on-fbis-national-security-related-requests-for-user-identities/)
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57577958-38/google-
fights-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57577958-38/google-fights-fbis-
warrantless-data-requests-in-federal-court/)

------
mindcrime
Hmm... as a Libertarian / Voluntaryist / Anarcho-capitalist / whatever-you-
want-to-call it, I am sympathetic to what Larry Page is saying. But there are
definitely aspects of this story that are fairly unappealing (Larry Page
naked, for starters).

I'm not sure what the answer is though: By now it should be clear that
"government" as a tool to social engineer a perfect world, isn't working.
Corporations are always the villians in this cyberpunk'ish stories, but you
don't have corporations without government. But you _can_ have technology
without government or corporations, so what happens when the tech itself
becomes so powerful that it changes the basic nature of society? Getting rid
of government and/or corporations won't help, and if you try to counter
technology with more technology you just have an arms race.

OK, I'm depressed now. :-(

~~~
scilro
Technology can never solve social problems. The answer is to simply work on
fixing the problems we have in society the only way we actually can: through
discourse, activism, democracy.

~~~
mindcrime
_Technology can never solve social problems. The answer is to simply work on
fixing the problems we have in society the only way we actually can: through
discourse, activism, democracy._

I'm not actually sure _anything_ can truly solve social problems. I tend to
believe that human nature is such that we will always have some level of
strife and conflict in our world. I think the best we can do is to minimize
it, and create structures that at least respect the sovereignty of the
individual.

But even what I just said gets to the point of why "we" will never be
uniformly happy. Different people have fundamentally different goals and
principles and there's objective way to resolve those disputes. My
foundational principle is freedom from use of force or aggression, and the
primacy and sovereignty of the individual. Other people have more of a
utilitarian "the most happiness for the maximum number of people" as their
principle. And unless the former inevitably leads to the latter by
coincidence, there's really no way to reconcile those two positions, in terms
of "how do we solve social problems" since those two people don't even agree
on what the problem is in the first place.

As for democracy: "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for
dinner. Liberty is a well armed sheep contesting the vote".

Even in a representative republic like in the US, democracy is nothing special
if you're the under-represented minority who has to suffer the "tyranny of the
majority".

------
flipgimble
While its very interesting to explore and write about the implications of
Larry Page's idea of experimentation unfettered by government laws, this reads
like a poorly written sci-fi story by someone interested by technology, but
not knowledgeable enough to write something remotely credible. It lost me at
Google Being, 'stitched from photographs'. It focuses mostly on unfettered
data collection, which is the main fear of journalists writing about Google.

~~~
dwild
We should write a similar story about a world where journalists control the
decision of everyone with this kind of article...

------
farinasa
The biggest blunder of this article is how they convey Google. Do they know a
little more about me than I like? Sure. But so does Facebook, Microsoft, and
OkCupid!. The difference here is that if I want out of Google, I simply go to
the dashboard and erase my history. I don't know how deep their erasure goes,
but it is certainly more comforting than what any other company offers.

Facebook holds your info for a week and if you sign back in, the week
restarts. During that week they goad you to come back. Not exactly
cooperative.

And lets vilify Google first and foremost (/s). I run Ghostery. I am much more
scared by the number of unique tracking companies. I don't know anything about
them. How could I even begin to tell nearly 1500 known tracking companies to
leave me alone? Simply telling them to leave me alone gives them data about
me, which they certainly must keep if I am to be left alone.

~~~
mortehu
> Facebook holds your info for a week and if you sign back in, the week
> restarts.

I think this might be intended as protection against attacks on your account.
If someone gets ahold of your password and deletes your account, it's nice
that you'll be able to restore it for some time after, isn't it? I agree that
the wording of the e-mails they send when this happens is unfortunate.

------
cmars
Lately I have been feeling we as builders had this responsibility to build the
Internet that the world needed, and we failed. We were distracted, we got
rich, we ignored or misread the needs of our fellow humans.

The walled gardens that we now find so insidious and creepy are due to our own
failure to empower the users. We made HTTP, SMTP, XMPP protocols. Large
companies brought these to the masses, in ways the masses can understand and
interact with in their limited capacity... for a price.

Can we reclaim humanity's birthright? Can we build a vision of the world we
wish to live in, that is accessible to and understandable by many? Or is our
entire collective fate to become a monetized click stream of suckers?

This article names Google, but to me that is beside the point. Google is a
large system set in motion by shareholders and market forces that has
equilibrium. It consumes click streams and subscriptions, and excretes money,
like others of its kind. Can such an organism ever serve the best interests of
humanity all the time?

If you find yourself hating Google, better to look within yourself. Do you
have the courage to walk away from these kinds of services and build an
alternative, however humble it might be, that empowers and liberates your
fellow humans?

I am still working on this in myself. My email is still gmail, I would miss
some personalities in my G+ circles, but I am uncomfortable, and I find
current trends unsettling.

(edited for grammar)

------
incision
I see it now, Google is an embryonic stage of The Culture [0].

0: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture>

~~~
arethuza
"in practice social convention among the Minds prohibits them from watching,
or interfering in, citizens' lives unless requested, or unless they perceive
severe risk"

One of the cute things about the Culture is how damned _nice_ the Minds are -
even when they are effectively gods to their meat friends/pets/therapists.

~~~
cpeterso
> One of the cute things about the Culture is how damned nice the Minds are

Were the Minds (originally) designed to be "nice"? Or have they evolved to be
nice because that is an effective way to influence humans? (I've only read one
Culture book.)

------
EFruit
I am scared, intrigued, worried, and overall frightened. Not frightened by the
article, but by the fact that I can't decide if I am for or against this.

I wonder at what phase 'Don't be evil' would break down, or alternatively,
when their definition of 'evil' would be changed to exclude what they were
doing.

~~~
mindcrime
_Not frightened by the article, but by the fact that I can't decide if I am
for or against this._

That's sort of the same reaction I am having. I'm all for getting rid of
governments and most of what we call "law" today, but this particular vision
of a possible outcome seems a bit disturbing in some ways. But, then again,
it's just speculative fiction, not reality...

------
atirip
But when Google Island is somewhere where are no laws, then anybody with
enough muscle can take it away from poor Larry. And nothing Larry can do,
because there are no laws. Taker keep.

~~~
abcd_f
Except that he's the only one with the root access.

~~~
gaius
Quite. In the Star Trek example, the Captain can say "Computer, locate X", and
sometimes he says "Computer, deactivate X's devices" and the computer just
does it. It's very unlikely, because he's an idealized fictional hero, that
anyone with that kind of power in the real work, is as wise and benevolent as
Picard - and even Picard makes mistakes.

~~~
Yen
Two things about Star Trek -

1\. Other characters can and do ask for locations. This is apparently
considered non-private information.

2\. As open and utopian as the Federation may be portrayed to be, Picard is
still the commander of a military vessel, so I wouldn't be surprised if in
other contexts, computers give out less personal information and grant less
power to administrators.

------
ek
Ultimately, I think that this article fallaciously anthropomorphizes Google,
and that is the reason why the situation it posits seems so scary.

Google is a machine, designed by people. It is true that they have lots and
lots of data about individuals, but it is being handled by vast amounts of
software and hardware alongside so much other data about so many things about
people that there is somewhat of an anonymizing factor. If Google were an
individual, what they do would certainly be creepy, but they are not. To put
paranoia to rest, it might be in their favor to enact transparent safeguards
of some sort that assure consumers that their data is in general not being
accessed by Google employees or nefarious third parties (the most notable
nefarious third party being, of course, the government).

------
wasd
It seems like I may have missed the point or that this struck a sensitive
nerve for a few people but I just found it mildly funny. I'm not sure if the
piece was supposed to be anything more than a bit of satire and a friendly jab
at Google.

------
hahainternet
This is the worst opinion piece I have ever read. The fact it made it to Wired
just devalues the whole magazine in my eyes.

Did nobody seriously review this before it was published? Did nobody ask what
sort of trauma the writer may have suffered?

------
methodin
We haven't passed through the digital renaissance yet. Shouldn't be too long
(10 years? - right now it's just a party) but until then lines will be gray
and rules will be befuddled. You need to have the visionaries to get us
through it, though. There aren't many.

------
doctorstupid
_“It also has thousands of micro sensors which are now swarming through your
blood stream.”_

This metaphor of the electrolyte solution is nice. Obviously an allusion to a
seemingly innocuous service which ends up tracking every aspect of one's life.

------
martythemaniak
I do believe we need a place like that, except I don't think its feasible to
do it on Earth - there is simply too much baggage here.

Luckily we could be less than a generation away from colonizing Mars - and
what better place for the adventurous experimenters to go? Imagine an entire
planet where you can do anything you want, but also an incredibly harsh one
where the need of survival will drive experimentation and adaptation.

------
dmbaggett
Begun the Google Backlash has.

~~~
andyhmltn
Yet disappeared the Yoda fad, has not.

------
bmbyers
Point of interest: google has owned an Alpha fighter jet for years

[http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-fighter-jet-to-
air-f...](http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-fighter-jet-to-air-
fleet-15252)

------
dpcx
This is a very scary potential view of the future.

~~~
JonSkeptic
I also do not wish to see Larry Paige naked.

------
bdz
This. Also my first impression was a city like Rapture in Bioshock.

