Today's (Oct. 28) lecture at UC Berkeley's iSchool by Hal Varian, former iSchool dean and now chief economist of Google (as if they are a nation unto themselves), seemed like a variant of Gary Vaynerchuck's paean to the powers of the Internet. Instead of focusing on the Web's promise of economic success and personal expression, Varian argued the Internet is the mothership of creativity in the 21st century.
Varian -- who oversees new ways of increasing ad revenues through Google search -- attributes the "huge innovation on the Web in the last fifteen years" to what he calls combinatorial innovation. This is basically the ability of developers to mix and match existing bits of code to build anything they like. This ability has driven most human transactions to new levels of speed by automating processes from verification to data storage and analysis. It's also allowed Google to drive dollars to its coffers from advertisers.
The Google economist compared ancient systems of commerce, starting with Mediterranean traders, to Ford's creation of the assembly line (which was actually used by the Venetians in the 14th century to build galleons, according to Dante). It seems as if all history has been leading to the past fifteen years as the apex of human achievement.
Where is the open source search engine, the one that doesn't link the consumption of goods and services to the quest for knowledge? Google is becoming more online shopping site than knowledge engine, or maybe it always was. I want my mall separate from my university.
I've always thought malls would only be improved if they included space for non-commercial activity. In Mexico, some of them contain storefront chapels. Here, a university, or concert area, might suggest to "consumers" that there's more to the world than mallratitude.
Posted by: tm | October 29, 2009 at 07:01 PM