On Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:20:36 GMT, "Andrew Heenan"
<andrew.heenan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>"Roy Schestowitz" quoted: ...
>> | The authors are examining fears that search engines will create a
>> | situation where a self-reinforcing cycle of popularity will create
>> | an Internet in which a limited number of information sources
>> | predominate: "[S]earch engines bias the traffic of users according to
>> | their page ranking strategies, and it has been argued that they create
>> | a vicious cycle that amplifies the dominance of established and
>> | already popular sites. This bias could lead to a dangerous monopoly
>> | of information."
>
>Further proof (if further proof were needed) that academics rarely have a
>clue about the real world.
>
>If they confined their argument to suggesting that Google et al *slowed* the
>emergence of new soyurces, I'd be interested - but to talk about a dangerous
>monoploy when most of the buiest sites didn't even exist a few years ago is
>so pathetic, you have to see academic ambition beating common sense into
>15th place.
People fund the idea of academic ambition, no-one is funding common
sense. People champion the idea of academic universities and so forth
and are happy to put their name to them, but no-one funds street
smarts. Google should hang out a sign, "Street-smarts wanted here".
God knows they need it. Every culture has its flaws and the flaw at
the mountain seems to be the pursuit and encouragement of individual
innovation, not a bad thing in itself, of course, but unchecked it
seems to keep turning into folly. It's like invention of the sake of
invention but when it comes to putting it to good use or maintenance
there's no-one there to do it. Yet whom do they approach? You notice
they've phoned Roy out of this group and they haven't phoned me?
Imagine a bunch of Googlers sitting around thinking, who at AISE is
going to fit in with us? And that's the flaw with most cultures, it
isn't how apt or how observant you are, in a lot of cases it isn't how
good at your job you are either, it's whether your face fits. It's,
"Is he going to fit in around here?" So right there, there goes your
sense of perspective because there's no-one to offer an alternative
point of view.
Someone once said "There can be no effective government without an
able and effective opposition", yet who do Google keep employing? More
and more like-minded people. And that, eventually, is what brings all
cultures down. Looks like Google's going the same way.
BB
--
http://www.kruse.co.uk/affordable-website-promotion-services.htm
http://www.kruse.co.uk/google-mountain.htm
http://www.kruse.co.uk/seo-home-page.htm
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