Technology: Common Good or Communications Cloak?

When I first began reading Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs, I was mystified by why professor Nicco Mele assigned a book that was published in 2002, and with the speed of technology development, grossly outdated.  When I questioned Professor Mele about the relevance of this outdated book, he asked me to think more deeply about why he may have made this assignment.  What themes in the book were present in other class readings?  After thinking for a few minutes, I realized that what Rheingold was professing between his touting of texting, wearable computers and cooperative technologies were the communities that would be knitted together and mobilized through their use.  As we read in Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s Naked Conversations, and in John Battelle’s The Search, blogging and the internet were created by computer geeks and academics who wanted to communicate more easily with one another.  Communities linked by common interests were and are created by the use of these digital technologies such as blogging, mobile texting, and reputational systems.  

In addition to creating and maintaining communities, there are some similar values present in these collaborative systems….  trust and openness being the two of the most cited values.  As we read in Naked Conversations and in Smart Mobs, trust seems to develop through successful cooperative technology.  Furthermore, as we read in Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and as reinforced by Rheingold, some of today’s most widely used technology was made possible by open source product development.  In open source development, volunteer collaboration is key to the successful production of software.  A community of researchers with similar interests and expertise come together for the common good.  Again, trust is the basis for successful projects.

While it is terrific that technology provides a conduit for many people to come together in communities, there is something that bothers me.  Since we can more easily communicate electronically with colleagues, friends and others who share our passions en masse, are we creating a society in which people no longer know how to communicate in person one-on-one?  I think of the times when either I, or a colleague, have chosen to defend a course of action or try to resolve a conflict by using email.  Are we developing a culture where people can hide behind the cloak of technology instead of resolving issues less comfortably by speaking in person with an individual? 

I often look questionably at my own children who tell me they “spoke” to someone, which they meant they communicated by texting or through Facebook.  While it is terrific that blogging and texting can have a viral effect in communicating with groups, what does that mean to our ability to communicate in person?  I remember when my daughter met-in person- a future college classmate with whom she had developed an on-line relationship… While they had spent hours together as part of a college on-line community, their first in-person meeting was wrought with awkwardness and uneasiness. 

So, as I learn more about collaborative digital communities, I hope that while technology can create and mobilize social networks, we don’t lose sight of the importance of being able to communicate as easily in person as we are through computers or mobile phones.

Google- Growing Pains= Success

John Battelle’s “The Search” was an eye-opener on the growth of Google, its growing pains, the company’s prospect for the future and the opportunities of the search process in the next several years.  This week’s reading selection started with some of the problems that on-line businesses had with Google when it changed the algorithm and hence the way those businesses were ranked when searched.   (I personally would not be one to take ranking for granted and would have bought AdWords if I made my living with an on-line business.) It then went on to discuss how search can drive intent-based commerce such as newspaper subscriptions, local advertising, or in the future cell phones which could interact with the UPC system.  One of the issues with the search and commerce is over trademarked terms.  According to Google, Trust is an important value at the company.  It wants consumers to see the company as “unbiased and fair.”  This system can be compromised by the system of “click fraud” where by creating fraudulent sites to influence the rankings of terms based on the ranking algorithms which take into account the number of clicks on a term from another site.

                Another part of the company’s growing pains are the concerns with Google’s decision to go into China and the public cry in this country with the decision to comply with China’s censorship.  Google isn’t alone in dealing with this issue.  Business decisions are made all the time based on growth potential and the corporate costs associated with that decision.  (In this case the cost being to adhering to China’s censorship of sites re: the national culture, news, and policies.)  On the other side of government involvement-another form of growing pains- is our own country’s decision, through the Patriot Act, to use search history of individuals to determine whether or not they are a threat to our country.  There is a fine line between serving as a “big brother” and in doing so, abusing civil liberties, and in researching the search history of those who truly may want to endanger the United States.

Going public was a huge undertaking and another form of growing pains for Google.   According to Battelle, there was a great deal of mishaps the company faced when going public.  I have to say that I admire the fact that in going public.  The company principals, Page, Brin and Schmidt decided not to give up their mode of managing the company just to please Wall Street.  While the company may not be as polished as other publically traded entities- (So what if meetings doesn’t start on time) -it is still able to develop products and be successful in earning money.  I was pleased to see, for instance, that in reviewing the company’s financials, yesterday’s stock price was $413.62 per share.  I was impressed that in addressing the growth of the company, Brin and Page developed a plan for that growth.  (Although Robert Scoble and Shel Israel would scold Google for not being transparent with that plan.)  I also was impressed that even with the growth, the company’s leaders found a way to grow new products in a way that was true to their hands-on management style.  Google Labs- Google’s project idea development system- currently has fourteen projects being explored.  Dan Gillmor, Scoble and Israel would all approve with the fact that through Google’s web site, feedback is asked for on all of the projects.  There are seventeen products which came from Google Labs and are now being offered to Google customers.  Some of them improve search and others like Battelle suggests as needed offer a way to interface with all aspects of an individual’s personal computer and provide more intent driven search responses.

The bottom line is that Google is a very successful company that as it has grown, has not given into a managerial style that has been dictated by investors and or Wall Street.  In order to be successful, it will need to continue to be innovative and to be one step ahead of other companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo as well as other companies who will be nipping at their heels.  Will it always have growing pains?  Probably.  Any successful company does.  The trick will be how Page and Brin manages Google’s growth and as well as their business acumen.

Search As we know it…..

John Battelle’s book, The Search, really opened my eyes about the value of search and about Google’s growth as a company.  Battelle began the book by discussing search and the value it has to our society and to business.  The first part of the book was a description of what search is and how it straddles marketing, media, technology, pop culture, international law and civil and how it has grown as a media business.

 

Battelle then took his readers through how a search worked: crawl, the index and then the serving of results. This was followed by a history of the technological history of the internet and the evolution of the importance of search as a business model and the companies which sprung up around it.

 

Battelle then spent time reporting on the dot.com era, when many companies were formed but struggled with how to produce revenue which would fund their bottom line.  He discussed how in the beginning, companies whose main businesses were portals-like Yahoo and AOL- spent their time devising business models which kept people from leaving their sites. Hence banner ads were developed which may or may not have had any relevancy to the readers.  An entire chapter was devoted to Bill Gross of GoTo.com and Overture, who according to the author was the person responsible for the theory of using search as a way to target advertising.  His premise was that if he could deliver “good traffic” to advertisers, they would pay more to have consumers be exposed to their ad who might possibly buy their product.  Gross also developed a ranking system by which prior clicks to a particular site would be a factor in how the search ranked that site.  According to Battelle, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who started Google, stole Gross’s idea.  Page and Brin implemented Gross’s way of ranking sites according to how many clicks that site had, not given higher rank to those where advertisers were to gain.

 

Battelle’s account of the growth of Google was very interesting. Page and Brin may have seemed arrogant, but they also appeared to understand, unlike Yahoo and AOL, that there was virtue in sending readers to other sites. When I read this section, I thought of Israel and Scoble’s lauding of blogs which linked readers to other sites. Israel and Scoble also came to mind when I read about Google’s problems with customer service for advertisers using AdWords.  In their book the authors mentioned that Google didn’t allow its employees to blog.  Although blogging isn’t the end all be all, I do have to wonder if Google did blog, whether their customer service problems could have been minimized.

 

Google’s corporate missive of “Do No Evil” clearly defines the company’s culture and the theme for how business both internally and externally should be done.  As Battelle points out, the issues confronting Google post 9/11 does raise questions as to whether the slogan needs to be changed.  It is sad to think that instead of searches being used to capture an anthropological snapshot of culture, searches now can be used to infringe on civil rights all in the name of national security. 

Finally, one comment regarding the search history resonated with me. In the infancy of the web, people used the search engine to find what the web could offer.  Now individuals use it to learn about and understand the topic on which they are searching.  I can’t imagine life without it!