For today’s class, you read the eighth chapter of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows. Titled “The Church of Google,” it explores how integrated Google is into our experience of the Internet. What else did you learn from this chapter? How does it fit into Carr’s overall argument in the book? Work on this for ten minutes.
13 thoughts on “Beginning of Class Writing: Carr, The Shallows, Eight”
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In this chapter, which is interestingly named “The Church of Google” Carr takes a very distinct point of view on Google. Google is an immense search engine, an innovation in its own, doe to the amount of processing power the engine has behind it. How is Google able to keep up with what people search and actually in many cases know what you’re going to search before you fully complete it? Well, algorithms are helpful as they set an order on how to do things efficiently. The key word is efficient. Carr discusses a mechanical engineer called Frederick Winslow Taylor, someone who created a system of efficiency. In order to do things efficiently, there has to be a certain way of doing things, no matter what is asked in that moment. How does this relate back to Google? People search many things on Google, but no matter how varied the results are, the same algorithm is used. It is efficient enough that billions of people use it simultaneously. Soon, Google will implement an AI system, or Artificial Intelligence, where a machine learns how to do things. IF this is to occur, then Google will dominate the search engine medium. The purpose is to make things more efficient than they already are.
In chapter eight, Carr starts talking about how a man named Frederick Winslow Taylor reinvented the way labor workers worked in factories to increase production time and revenue. He made workers do the same thing over and over again in order for them to not waste time doing it their own specific way. His “system” impressed manufactures and was embraced by almost all universally. His ways are actually instilled in our society to this day. The internet was made for the efficient, automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best way” to carry out the mental movements of what we’ve come to describe as knowledge work. Google is the internet’s church and Taylorism is worshipped in there and his ideals are what inspire and drive people at Google to ” systemize everything” and “carry experiments to refine the algorithms that increasingly guide how all of us find information and extract meaning from it.” Larry Page, its CEO, pioneered the creation of the hyperlink and realized that a page with a lot of incoming links has more authority as opposed to one with fewer links coming in. Ads also became an invention seen through Page’s eyes. He thought that whatever the person was google searching would help make them relate ads to the searches in order to possibly entice the user and not annoy or bother them. Internet social media outlets have jumped onto the bandwagon of spreading the ever-growing pool of information on the internet. Google’s main goal is to make the world’s information “universally accessible and useful” and to ultimately digitize ever more types of information and “Taylorize” it. Google also has created the “Google Book Search” which has over a million digitized copies of books and it wants to digitize all of the books in the world. Lastly, Google has decided to start working on creating A.I. or artificial intelegience and wants it to know what you’ll want to search before you even start searching for it.
Rahat Ahmed
Professor Ellis
English 1101
12/6/15
The Shallows
In this particular chapter of “The Shallows” called “The Church Google” Nicholas Carr begins by reviewing the ideas of efficiency and productivity brought about by Fredrick Winslow Taylor. Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who turned the industrial companies upside down for the better. Fredrick Winslow Taylor was also an athlete that excelled in Tennis and Golf. According to Nicholas Carr “ The development of a well rounded mind requires both an ability to find and quickly parse a wide range of information and a capacity for open ended reflection. There needs to be time for efficient data collection and time for inefficient contemplation, The problem today is that we’re loosing our ability to strike a balance between those two very different states of mind. Mentally, we’re in perpetual locomotion. I struggled a bit to fully understand this quote but I think I might know what Carr is saying. A human mind has the tendency to make both good and bad choices but the process of that particular decision needs some sort of time to figure out what would be the better thing to do. This chapter had made some very good points on how Google is very helpful, but I personally prefer to use my own brain to get certain things done.
Google is a search engine that is used all over the world by almost every individual that use the web. It is a resources that can and should be minded and processed with industrial efficiency. Google is a component of the web that inspire and a reason for many individual to use the net. With all the information it offers to us all, it greatly promotes and influences procrastination, instead of advocating user to read and expand their knowledge. For google, the relevance of a book is not self-contained literacy work, but another piece of information that’s there. The library they are trying to create is not the public library we can go, but a small piece of what that is. In order to experience and the feel of books shelf and the library itself, then you would want to go to a library. Computer are technology, which cannot mimic the feeling of real world event.
In this chapter of Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”, Carr goes on to talk about probably, the worlds most used search engine to date, Google. “Why would he have some backlash on Google?” One may think. Well, this is a completely rational thing to think about. Google is by far, the most useful search engine in terms of doing research and expanding your horizons on any given subject. However, to what extent is this so? According to this chapter, it seems that big business is taking over once again, and all people see is dollar signs. Not to take anything away from Google, being that it is one of the most innovative things ever created. Being that it allows for seemingly flawless searches on any given topic in an instant, even though the internet is flooded with millions upon millions of different sources. Yet, even with this being the case, Google is still not perfect. Apparently, in order to make Google perfect, they would have to turn it into an A.I. Reason for this is because the developers of Google are seeking out a way to make research that much better. They figure that through the use of A.I, Google will be able to know what you want to search up before you even know it. If you think about this, doesn’t that sound kind of scary? I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want is for an internet search engine to be able to read my thoughts. Next thing you know, we’ll be witnessing the dawn of the Cyber apocalypse.
During this chapter Carr lead us to a really specific and deep explanation in how did google was created and how it’s been used and growing after time. According to Carr google was created by Larry page and Serguei Brin during the 1998. The scientist Joseph Weizenbaum, He is a computer in Massachusetts instituted that develops the most bigger net search in the history. During his early years, he was a person that always look beyond on what he really needs to do. He was an undergraduate student he was accepted in vermon University because of his productivity and his dedication to the things he does. Google started as an small search page, they knew that in order for them to spend the page they needed money , until Weizenbaum support them and the problem of money was no longer a problem. Google grew fast and fast, more people used it and become the most commun and used search page around the net.
In Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows” chapter 8“The Church of Google”, he talks about Google from a certain point of view. Google is the most used search engine of its time; and because of the amount of power it has is second to none. Google not only has the able to keep up with what we search, but it can actually predict our searches well before we even finish them, this procedure as creepy as it may sound, help to enforce an order in which everything runs efficiently. Nicholas goes on to talk about a mechanical engineer named Frederick Winslow Taylor, who went on to created a system of efficiency. He states “In order to do things efficiently, there has to be a certain way of doing things, no matter what is asked in that moment.” It’s the same thing in the case of Google, when people search for many things online, no matter how many varied the results there are, the same procedure is used. It’s so efficient that millions of people use it simultaneously. Eventually, Google will be installing an Artificial Intelligence system, where a machine learns how to do things. The purpose is to make things more efficient than they already are.
Googke is a very popular search engine. We use it everyday to find information about specific topics. At one time google was just a small webbrowser that required only a page. As people got to use it more and more it quickly became known as a search engine. Millions and millions of people use it worldwide. When Taylor was a young person he would always look for into the future. He made sure that if times ever did get worse he would have backup plans. One-day he got into a very bad tame and ended up killing himself. He had many reasons about the things he did and he never told anyone anybody them. Till this day there are still many uncovered reasons, data bases, plans and other types of work that is left behind.
Googke is a very popular search engine. We use it everyday to find information about specific topics. At one time google was just a small webbrowser that required only a page. As people got to use it more and more it quickly became known as a search engine. Millions and millions of people use it worldwide. When Taylor was a young person he would always look for into the future. He made sure that if times ever did get worse he would have backup plans. One-day he got into a very bad tame and ended up killing himself. He had many reasons about the things he did and he never told anyone anybody them. Till this day there are still many uncovered reasons, data bases, plans and other types of work that is left behind.
Nicholas Carr starts off chapter 8 of “The Shallows” with a man named Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor was known for creating an efficient system for workers that maximizes speed and output. His system was later adopted by factory owners during the time of the industrial revolution to be able to organize work. Taylor’s goal was to find and implement the best method of work in order to bring about “a utopia of perfect efficiency” (Carr, page 150). This chapter is about how Google praises this concept of Taylorism as they try to bring about this utopia. Neil Postman wrote in his book “Technopoly” that Taylorism is based on six major assumptions. The first being that the primary goal of human labor and thought is efficiency. The next is that technical calculation is superior to human judgement. Taylor believed that in the future, the system would be ahead of humans. The third assumption is that human judgement cannot be trusted because of our ambiguity and complexity. The fourth is that subjectivity is a distraction. Fifth is that what cannot be measured does not exist or has no real value. The last is that the affairs of citizens are best conducted by experts. Postman’s summary seems to really resemble Google’s ethic not he seems to have mistaken one. Instead of using experts to guide human affairs, Google uses software algorithms exactly as Taylor predicted.
The industry an technology we have today is thanks to this man, Frederick Winslow Taylor. According to chapter eight of “The Shallows” by Nicholas Cage, Taylor created the algorithm and throughout the Industrial Revolution, manufactures embraced his system. Chapter eight continues to discuss more about the origins of Google. The famous company is very much like Taylor and Taylorism, but Google also believes that the web is more reliable than human in leading lives in society. Larry Page, founder of Google, introduced the world wide web based on his algrothium and his own analogy. Eventually Google became what it is today, one of the largest media companies and making twenty two billion dollars only from advertising.
In chapter eight of “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr, entitled The Church of Google., Carr talks about the search engine Google and how it relates to Fredrick Winslow Taylor. Taylor created what we know as algorithms, which is a set of instructions used to complete a task. This creation had a great influence on the Industrial Revolution, and his system of “measurement and optimization” stems the Internet today. According to Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, his company is “founded around the science of measurement.” This is shown throughout the site, the way it calculates everything, from what we search to the concepts of advertisement based on what we search. With its goal to digitize the world, Google makes anything searchable, causing a distraction with not only advertisements but links based on the search as well. This leads to Carr talking about the concept of artificial intelligence, since at the moment Google would be the closest thing we have to it. It has transitioned to becoming a process that mimics the brain, by hoping to form connections in the way the brain does to make this concept more of a reality.
In chapter Number eight of “The Shallows “by Nicholas Carr, Carr name the tittle of the chapter “The Church of Google. This title is very interesting because a great deal of people believe that google has all the answer to their problems. Moreover, Carr begins by reviewing the ideas of efficiency and productivity brought about by Fredrick Winslow Taylor. Taylor’s experiments meant to boost efficiency in a steel plant. This happened by breaking down processes into small steps and testing to find the best execution of those steps. Taylor created a system that successfully increased productivity. I think this system is apply in today’s factories. However, program machines do some of the work in more advance factory. When a Google book pops up as a result and I click on it, it takes me directly to that page in the text with my phrase or search term highlighted. The reader is able to go back and read the chapter or full text from which the phrase originated.