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GoogleMania - er Google farlig?
Potentielt, i hvert fald.
Nyheden om, at Google lancerer en censureret udgave af sin søgemaskine til brug for det kinesiske marked har trukket en del bekymrede overskrifter, men som IT-politisk forening gør opmærksom på i dagens Jyllands-Posten (som citeret af Bo Gorzelak Pedersen), er den nødvendige infrastruktur til at censurere Internettet allerede på plads i Danmark.
I øjeblikket er det kun sider, der beskyldes for at huse børneporno, der sorteres fra - men man kunne frygte, hvad det næste bliver, der skal sorteres fra. Racistiske eller på anden måde anstødelige ytringer? Og måske ubehagelig kritik af den siddende regering følger efter? Så usandsynlig en sådan censur kunne forekomme os i dag, er infrastrukturen på plads.
Om den mulige risiko ved Google er der en glimrende analyse i dagens Guardian:
So: is Google a good thing? It certainly has made finding information incomparably easier. Google Scholar, which searches academic papers, is very useful, and will become more so. The powerful calculator feature, which will do advanced maths as well as highly practical things such as converting square feet into metres, is useful. Google News, which was invented by an engineer, Krishna Bharat, using his 20% time to come up with a broadly global news service in the wake of 9/11, is useful, and terrifies conventional news organisations. The translation service isn't useful yet, but I bet it will be one day. The command "define" is a useful, quick way of finding what a word means. The blog search is fairly handy and will get better. Google Earth isn't particularly useful, but it is brutally cool: you begin with a satellite view and gradually descend to earth, homing in with a level of detail that can give you a view of your own house (also, it turns out, of secret military installations). Gmail, with its super-swift searching and 2GB of free space, is amazing, if you don't mind the fact that your email is scanned and used to target ads (and stored indefinitely).Jeg tror, budskabet må være rimeligt klart, især efter nyhederne om, at også Microsoft og Yahoo! bukker og skraber for det kinesiske diktatur og givetvis også ville bukke og skrabe for et tilsvarende amerikansk eller dansk: Decentralisering er godt.
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Technologically, Google is an amazing thing. As for whether it is a good thing, that depends on what happens next.
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Google is cool. But Google also has the potential to destroy the publishing industry, the newspaper business, high street retailing and our privacy. Not that it will necessarily do any of these things, but for the first time, considered soberly, these things are technologically possible. The company is rich and determined and is not going away any time soon. It knows what it is doing technologically; socially, though, it can't possibly know, and I don't think anyone else can either.
Open Source, decentrale servere, decentrale systemer og kryptering er godt. Brug endelig de store, centrale tjenester (Google, Flickr, Yahoo!, Microsoft osv.), og brug dem til det, de gør godt - men lad være med at basere privatliv eller følsom infrastruktur på dem.
"Forretningshemmeligheder", "kopibeskyttelse" og proprietær (ikke-Open Source) software udgør fundamentalt en trussel mod et åbent og demokratisk samfund. Lad os endelig bruge udbyderne af sådanne tjenester, men lad os ikke ligefrem stole på dem. Heller ikke Google ...