The Database of Intentions

I should probably forgive John Battelle for the enraptured tone of his book, "The Search." I mean, I fawn over Google, too. I use it every day. It's my e-mail provider, go-to website, the way I track my online persona. And yes, it's probably changed the way a lot of people do a lot of things.

But what if Google's not as paradigm-shifting as Battelle makes them out to be? While the Gaurdian is declaring the death of capitalism and the birth of Google-ism, and this guy makes a pretty compelling claim Google is God, with it's omnipotence, omniprsence, and prayer-answering capabilities, I'm still not convinced.

I mean, there is an official Google Sucks website, with claims that Google partnered with China to censor the Internet. Another man calims that googlemaps almost landed him in jail. And the list could go on and on.

Whether or not I believe Google is great or ghastly though, I found all my support for either claim, on you guessed it, Google. Battelle must be right. Something that requires its usage just to argue its right or wrongness is something not just ubiquotous, it's revoluntionary--because it's the beginning and ending of seemingly all knowledge, even knowledge to disprove it.

This "Database of Intentions" as Battele terms it, has changed the entire world. It tracks our culture, our wants, and more. It's more than just a business model, it's a new way of life. I guess... But the new "Library of Alexandria"? "THE point of our inquiry and discovery"? That's lofty language.

What filled Google's role before google? The author argues that early, less-rudimentary computer-based search engines did, but something must have done so before that, even. Newspapers, consumer habits, church records, something. But Battelle would have you believe that there's really nothing before or after Google. It alone is the sole, supreme Database of Intentions. I'm not quite there yet. I'll need to do some more googling to find out.