Google and the World Brain Page #5

in having lots of things in Google

that would lead people to use Google

so they could make money

by having advertisements there.

What are books?

They are full of data

and so, the more data you have,

the more you can fine-tune

your search technologies.

Some of the enthusiasts for Google's

way of gathering data,

and it's not just Google at all,

I mean,

it's Silicon Valley in general.

It's the current cultural moment

and includes the other

Silicon Valley companies,

but also the modern world of finance.

And also, the modern world

of spy craft for states

and also the modern world

of criminality.

And the modern world of insurance

and health care.

All these things have this idea

that you grab all this data

in order to become very powerful,

you create a differential

in your ability to see information

versus the ordinary person.

And you create these new incredible

castles of power,

but it's OK, it's not just

traditional power mongering,

because you're making the world

more efficient.

I was a little boy in the '70s

growing up in India,

watching re-runs of Star Trek

on our family's black-and-white TV.

And from that, those times,

the picture of a Star Trek computer

was deeply ingrained in my head.

As a little boy, I

was just fascinated by the fact

that you can walk up to a computer

and ask it,

"Computer, what's the atmosphere

of that planet?"

That was just the most fascinating

thing to a little boy

and, from that day on,

it was my dream to build

that Star Trek computer.

Only later would I grow up

and realise it's really hard,

because computers

don't understand language.

And I went through this brief period

of disbelief as a graduate student,

where I didn't think I would reach

my dream in my lifetime.

But thanks to Google

and all the technologies

that we have built here,

and what I see in the pipeline,

I'm closer to my dream than ever.

Um...

Google were and are free to do

what they want with the scans.

And why should that concern us?

I mean, part of our ethos

and part of our objective

as a library

is to make the information that's

contained in our library available

as free of charge as we can possibly

make it to anybody who needs it.

And if Google is going to do that

on a larger scale, that's fine.

If they are going to make money

out of it down the line, why not?

You know, they've invested

a lot of money in it.

Um... There's no such thing

as a free lunch.

Who wouldn't want to have all

of the world's knowledge available

to everyone on the planet?

The problem is that Google,

as an intermediary in this process,

has certain interests

and has a certain agenda

that is not always transparent.

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