DELHI Sangeeta Kampani: This
refers to your cover story UnGoogled
(July 22). No matter what we think
of Google, we google. If there is some-
thing that at once frees us from the
tyranny of geography, it is google. Even
though we see internationalism and
multiculturalism waning, with nations
increasingly asserting their individual
identities, Google comes across as
a uniter-in-chief. Somewhere the
boun daries melt. You live in India or
Icel and, Norway or Nigeria, America
or Australia, there is a commonality
that runs through—courtesy Google!
It has shaped our social consciousness
in more ways than any other idea or
innovation of our times. Online access
to information at the click of a button
is changing social power dynamics.
A masseur you-tubes to enhance her
professional skills by watching
a step-by-step demonstration of
Ayurvedic therapies as much as
a research scholar quickly googles
a quote of Oscar Wilde to fine-tune her
assignment. There’s no need for trips
to libraries, or to borrow books from
reluctant neighbours. Everything is
available at the click of a button, 24x7.
Now the flip side. Doom-mongers
warn that increasing levels of
automation and artificial intelligence
could create disruptions in life beyond
what we could think of. Imagine
a situation in which there is universal
leisure and mass unemployment.
A jobs apocalypse! Who knows? We see
a smombie catastrophe (smombie is
a portmanteau of smartphone and
zombie) that has hit the world. Its
ramifications are widespread, but
nothing more chilling than South
Korea’s example where trials are in
progress for traffic lights to be put
on the ground so that busy-on-smart-
phone people don’t end up running
over each other.There is no dearth of those who paint
a dystopian future, yet the overall
scenario can’t be described as dismal.
By its very nature, change creates
upheaval, upturns the established
order and jostles us out of our comfort
zone. With its exponential potential,
Google is the new game-changer,
affording everyone the audacity to
hope. In a highly unequal world like
ours, such easy access to information
is empowering. My domestic help you-
tubes as often as I do. The gardener
excitedly zooms in a picture of an
exotic plant and gets to find tips on
growing it too. Somewhere the classes
melt. Somewhere it gets even!
Welcome aboard Google!BANGALORE H.N. Ramakrishna:
There are many search engines and
Google is just the most popular. It
seems the what-if you really wished
to explore was “What if there was no
internet?” The internet is here to stayand cannot be wished away. It has had
a profound impact on us, changing the
way we think and do many things—
some of which were not possible even
a decade ago. Posters can be torn
down, but ideas remain forever in
cyberspace. That’s what governments
are uncomfortable with. Of course,
many countries are building cy-
ber-walls to stop the flow of ideas.
A recent study suggests 90 per cent of
us are suffering from digital amnesia.
We don’t commit data to memory
because of the Google effect—we are
safe in the knowledge that answers are
just a click away, and are happy to treat
the web like an extension of our own
memory. The danger is not from
information itself, but in the large
quantities that are available on the
internet, and in how the internet is
changing the way we think and behave.
Often we acquire shallow information
with no deeper understanding. We are
turning ourselves into ‘informavores’.
The internet may well be making us
think we are smarter than we really
are, and this is a dangerous thing.
Sadly, the number of people who can
think for themselves is declining at
an alarming rate.NOIDA Bal Govind: Google is
probably one of the best things to have
happened to mankind. Like the Xerox
company became synonymous with
photocopying, Google has attained the
same status for online searching.
Googling has become such an integral
part of our lives that anyone who has
internet access will do so often to look
for something or the other. Looked
at from the perspective of somebody
brought up in the 1970s and ’80s,
Google is a real blessing. And Google
has kept pace with our dynamic and
technologically evolving world,
offering products to suit our changingletters
Google, Uniter-in-Chief
DEHR A DUN Rakesh AgrawalLife without Google is impossible for pedestrian researchers and third-rate writers.
one-linerJuly 22, 20194 OUTLOOK 5 August 2019