Mind-Manual

Google to Unveil Controversial Services

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Google, Inc. knows more about me than I do. Even the people I am closest to in my life don’t know as much as Google does. I use Google Search, Google Adsense, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar, YouTube and occasionally Google Notebook and Google Bookmarks. Google knows where I live, where I am most of the time (calendar), my SIN card number, my banking information, my real name, my friends, my interests, my hobbies, and my love of lavish dwarf entertainment. All in all, Google knows a terrifying amount and I’m wary of any organization knowing that much about me. In dystopian science fiction, the government is often portrayed as a Big Brother knowing every private detail about their citizens and we usually shudder in fear, but I’ve given all this information up to an entity who’s sole purpose is to make money and has made some vague claim to not being evil. I want to discuss three possible products that we might see coming up: Google OmniAds, Google BlackMail, and Google PreCrime.

Google OmniAds

Google doesn’t have to try hard to find out what sort of products or services I’m interested in based on what I search for, what ads I click on, what I write about on my blog, what I write emails about, etc. It could also quickly generate a profile of what my “hot buttons” are (loss of control or hair, for example) and create ads that are 95% effective. Instead of having ads based on the context of the page, have ads based on the psychographic buying profile of the person doing the web surfing. Enter Google OmniAds. Google knows everything about me and will have 95% influence on my buying decisions with ads like, “Losing your hair? Try lavish dwarf entertainment!”. The scary thing is, I might actually like that.

Google BlackMail

There’s a lot of “sensitive” emails I’ve stored in my GMail inbox, as well as “sensitive” google searches. My searches for ninja-pirate lovin’ videos, for example. Any number of those emails–if they got out–could seriously hurt my reputation as a fine upstanding gentleman among my nearest and dearest as well as potential employers. So, what’s a giant corporation geared towards profit to do? Start blackmailing people with their knowledge of your affairs, or that person you killed and just how much you liked Barbie’s Unicorn Adventure. Google would do it classy, too. No clandestine letters cut out from newspapers and magazines. You’d get your own BlackMail representative who will work with you to work out a good amount of money in exchange for keeping their mouth shut. Letting out information of your distinctly unmasculine love for hair braiding may cost as little as $100 to bury forever, but that time you searched drunkenly for Ukranian mail-order brides despite being married may cost as much as $100,000. It would be egalitarian, of course, and you would pay as much as you could afford. This would quickly become the most lucrative division of Google, Inc.

Google PreCrime

Google exclusively hires very, very smart people. All it needs to do is throw in a few good psychologists, write some programs that comb their data for specific personality markers as well as any emails saying, “tomorrow we bomb the white house” and you’ve got yourself the ability to predict crime. It doesn’t have to be big-time crime, either; theft of stationary from offices causes more than ten billion dollars of losses a year, and I’m sure someone out there is bragging about stealing that stapler before they got fired. I wonder how long it’ll be before the government orders Google to start running these search patterns on their data and identifying potential threats. Oh wait…

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What if Everyone Followed Their Dreams? There’d be no garbage pickers!

This is a question that shows up in various forms, such as, “If everyone awakens, will we all starve?” Usually, this is an excuse to justify the fear that causes us to not pursue what we truly want. Not being courageous enough to pursue our goals is ok, its the denial that that is the real issue is what will hold you back. The first thing is to acknowledge it. Courage is like a muscle and you are simply a bit weaker than your goal requires. However denial will only hurt you in the long run.

That, I believe, is the real reason people ask this question. It’s easy to feel good about yourself if everyone else is also stuck in the same place, or if you can assign some external reason for why you are not doing what you really want to do but don’t have the courage to right now. Those reasons enumerated, I do want to answer the question as asked:

Like I said previously, a massive change like everyone following their dreams will not happen suddenly. If anything, it could be argued that its been happening slowly over the last many decades. Massive social changes like that rarely happen very quickly (they’re called revolutions if they do). “For example, if everyone did what they felt their purpose was and there were no garbage-collectors left, this is some of what might happen: 1. The wages for a garbage collector would skyrocket. 2. People would have to clean up after themselves. 3. There would be a greater demand for solutions that didn’t require humans or as many humans, such as automated cleaning machines, and the people who really enjoy solving society’s problems using technology would love to create that.”

There are every kind of people. Paul taught me about this. This may sound really, really strange to you, but there are people who ENJOY being garbage collectors. The Fred Factor is a book about a postman who brings so much joy and purpose to his work. Most people would think that being a post delivery person would be dreary and boring, but Fred loves his work. The value of these people who really love to do this would go up dramatically because they are so rare, so they could actually make a lot of money doing something that others would consider “dreary”.

Finally, we, as a species/culture, can adapt to massive social changes such as if everyone is starting to follow their dreams. We’ve gone through a number before now. For example, I’m willing to bet that someone said at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, “What if everyone went to work in jobs in factories and left the farms; we’d all starve!”. And we have not starved. This henny penny, “the sky is falling” stuff is usually overrated.

Let’s say there was suddenly a severe shortage in the number of postal workers. Courier businesses would probably skyrocket, people would stop sending as many letters (as they have), the wages of postal workers would skyrocket, faxes and emails would grow much greater in number, many entrepreneurs would step in to attempt to come up with solutions that are cheaper and/or more efficient than the current system. Perhaps instead of getting mail delivered to our doors, each neighbourhood or block would get its own central mail box racks where you go to pick up the mail, like a PO Box, this is pretty common in many places around the world.

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