Google: The Real Superpower
April 21, 2014 |
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Researchers at Princeton and Northwestern universities have pored over 1,800 US policies and concluded that America is an oligarchy. Instead of looking out for the majority of the country’s citizens, the US government is ruled by the interests of the rich and the powerful, they found. No great surprises there, then.
But the government is not the only American power whose motivations need to be rigorously examined. Some 2,400 miles away from Washington, in Silicon Valley, Google is aggressively gaining power with little to keep it in check.
It has cosied up to governments around the world so effectively that its chairman, Eric Schmidt, is a White House advisor. In Britain, its executives meet with ministers more than almost any other corporation.
Google is arguably one of the most influential nonstate actors in international affairs, operating in security domains long the purview of nation-states: It tracks the global arms trade, spends millions creating crisis-alert tools to inform the public about looming natural disasters, monitors the spread of the flu, and acts as a global censor to protect American interests abroad.
Google has even intervened into land disputes, one of the most fraught and universal security issues facing states today, siding with an indigenous group in the Brazilian Amazon to help the tribe document and post evidence about intrusions on its land through Google Earth.
Google can’t be blamed for this: one of its jobs is to lobby for laws that benefit its shareholders, but it is up to governments to push back. As things stand, Google – and to a lesser extent, Facebook – are in danger of becoming the architects of the law.
As Google evolves its role on the world stage, the fundamental question might be less about whether states might regulate Google, but whether states can compete against such a powerful, global technology platform.
In a series of sketches about “our future world” in “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business,” a new book by Schmidt and Cohen, there is the slightest of hints of what Google’s alignment with state security apparatuses might actually look like, especially in regards to counterterrorism efforts: “We’ll use computers to run predictive correlations from huge volumes of data to track and catch terrorists, but how they are interrogated and handled thereafter will remain the purview of humans and their laws,” they write.
Is there a global, nonstate actor with more access to “huge volumes of data” than Google? Indeed, Google, which often bristles at regulation, may have little choice but to enter and cooperate more fully with states in the fraught arena of counterterrorism. “The public will demand that technology companies do more in the fight against terrorism,” Cohen and Schmidt write.
Meanwhile, these companies are becoming ever more sophisticated about the amount of information they access about users. Google scans our emails. It knows where we are. It anticipates what we want before we even know it. Sure there are privacy settings and all that, but surrendering to Google also feels nigh on impossible to avoid if you want to live in the 21st century and if you think their reach only effects computer users then think again.
Google recently acquired smart thermostat maker Nest for $3.2 billion, the potential for data creep now invades our homes on multiple levels. Google street view is only the first step in providing more data about where you live. It was just disclosed this week that Google has also acquired Titan Aerospace, giving Google access to high-altitude, solar-powered satellites that provides access to data services around the world as well as advanced drone capabilities. It appears the ever watchful Google eye in the sky will be monitoring us all from above.
It doesn’t stop there either. If Google Glass is widely adopted, it will be able to clock everything we see, while the advance of Google Wallet could position the company at the heart of much of the world’s spending. Google has invested billions in driverless cars, wearable gadgets and pretty much any new emerging technologies. Some so secretive they have a special "X" division for top secret projects.
In the past few months, eight of the 12 companies the search giant has acquired have "robotics" in their name or descriptions. Google is on a robot shopping spree, and its recent purchase of a military robot maker Boston Dynamics has some wondering what exactly the company intends to do with its own zoo of electronic creatures that creep, crawl, and climb.
One source at the technology giant put it well when she referred to the company as an “unelected superpower”. I think this is a fair summary. So far, we are fortunate that that dictatorship is a relatively benign one. The company’s mantra is “do no evil”, and while people may disagree on what evil means, broadly speaking, its founders are pretty normal guys. But Larry Page and Sergey Brin will not be around forever. Nor should we rely on any entity that powerful to regulate its own behavior.
It remains to be seen how state-like will states allow Google to become? As a global, borderless entity, what mechanisms exist for Google’s billions of global users to hold Google accountable?
Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/April21/212.html#KCLEopD2vKMjopy1.99
April 21, 2014 |
Share this article
Researchers at Princeton and Northwestern universities have pored over 1,800 US policies and concluded that America is an oligarchy. Instead of looking out for the majority of the country’s citizens, the US government is ruled by the interests of the rich and the powerful, they found. No great surprises there, then.
But the government is not the only American power whose motivations need to be rigorously examined. Some 2,400 miles away from Washington, in Silicon Valley, Google is aggressively gaining power with little to keep it in check.
It has cosied up to governments around the world so effectively that its chairman, Eric Schmidt, is a White House advisor. In Britain, its executives meet with ministers more than almost any other corporation.
Google is arguably one of the most influential nonstate actors in international affairs, operating in security domains long the purview of nation-states: It tracks the global arms trade, spends millions creating crisis-alert tools to inform the public about looming natural disasters, monitors the spread of the flu, and acts as a global censor to protect American interests abroad.
Google has even intervened into land disputes, one of the most fraught and universal security issues facing states today, siding with an indigenous group in the Brazilian Amazon to help the tribe document and post evidence about intrusions on its land through Google Earth.
Google can’t be blamed for this: one of its jobs is to lobby for laws that benefit its shareholders, but it is up to governments to push back. As things stand, Google – and to a lesser extent, Facebook – are in danger of becoming the architects of the law.
As Google evolves its role on the world stage, the fundamental question might be less about whether states might regulate Google, but whether states can compete against such a powerful, global technology platform.
In a series of sketches about “our future world” in “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business,” a new book by Schmidt and Cohen, there is the slightest of hints of what Google’s alignment with state security apparatuses might actually look like, especially in regards to counterterrorism efforts: “We’ll use computers to run predictive correlations from huge volumes of data to track and catch terrorists, but how they are interrogated and handled thereafter will remain the purview of humans and their laws,” they write.
Is there a global, nonstate actor with more access to “huge volumes of data” than Google? Indeed, Google, which often bristles at regulation, may have little choice but to enter and cooperate more fully with states in the fraught arena of counterterrorism. “The public will demand that technology companies do more in the fight against terrorism,” Cohen and Schmidt write.
Meanwhile, these companies are becoming ever more sophisticated about the amount of information they access about users. Google scans our emails. It knows where we are. It anticipates what we want before we even know it. Sure there are privacy settings and all that, but surrendering to Google also feels nigh on impossible to avoid if you want to live in the 21st century and if you think their reach only effects computer users then think again.
Google recently acquired smart thermostat maker Nest for $3.2 billion, the potential for data creep now invades our homes on multiple levels. Google street view is only the first step in providing more data about where you live. It was just disclosed this week that Google has also acquired Titan Aerospace, giving Google access to high-altitude, solar-powered satellites that provides access to data services around the world as well as advanced drone capabilities. It appears the ever watchful Google eye in the sky will be monitoring us all from above.
It doesn’t stop there either. If Google Glass is widely adopted, it will be able to clock everything we see, while the advance of Google Wallet could position the company at the heart of much of the world’s spending. Google has invested billions in driverless cars, wearable gadgets and pretty much any new emerging technologies. Some so secretive they have a special "X" division for top secret projects.
In the past few months, eight of the 12 companies the search giant has acquired have "robotics" in their name or descriptions. Google is on a robot shopping spree, and its recent purchase of a military robot maker Boston Dynamics has some wondering what exactly the company intends to do with its own zoo of electronic creatures that creep, crawl, and climb.
One source at the technology giant put it well when she referred to the company as an “unelected superpower”. I think this is a fair summary. So far, we are fortunate that that dictatorship is a relatively benign one. The company’s mantra is “do no evil”, and while people may disagree on what evil means, broadly speaking, its founders are pretty normal guys. But Larry Page and Sergey Brin will not be around forever. Nor should we rely on any entity that powerful to regulate its own behavior.
It remains to be seen how state-like will states allow Google to become? As a global, borderless entity, what mechanisms exist for Google’s billions of global users to hold Google accountable?
Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/April21/212.html#KCLEopD2vKMjopy1.99
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