Sunday 11 June 2006

Pic of the day: To the right: Google Desktop 3's sidebar. The rest of the screen: My Google personalized startup page.

Google Desktop 3

On my previous main machine, I used to have Google Desktop, the program that lets me google my own hard disk. I did not need it often, since most of what I have on my machine is also on the Net, including my journal. And with today's capacity, both in bandwidth and Google's servers, it did not really make much of a difference. So I did not immediately feel the need to install it on my newest machine when I moved over.

Eventually however some minor episode made me consider it again. I found that Google Desktop now had expanded into a more complete desktop companion. Not only did it keep track of what was on my hard disk... it could keep track of all my computers, at the home network and at work (though I don't use it on the actual work computer, only my private computer at work... long story). Yes, evidently the documents that are indexed on one of my machines are copied to Google's servers from whence I can get them at any other machine I have Desktop 3 on. Does this disturb me? Not really. The things I hide are generally less creepy or embarrassing than what thousands of people desperately try to show off. I sincerely doubt the guys at Google are watching with big eyes.

Google Desktop 3 will also download news in the background and show them to me in a corner of the screen, or in a bar at the edge of the screen. (It even shows headlines in a corner now and then while I play City of Heroes, although I am sure I could turn it off somehow if I really wanted to.) It has a small notepad with auto-saving, and for some reason even shows my picture in the corner. I suppose I could turn that off, but it includes pictures from web sites I sometimes visit.

Yes, Google now has my permission to play Big Brother with my online life. I am not quite sure how much it keeps track of and brings together. I don't see the big effect I had expected from my web searches, for instance. But when it comes to news sites, it does to some degree take notice and make sure to include those I have visited manually, if they have RSS feeds. I don't mind. "Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity." I'm still the lab guy and Google Desktop is still the rat. At least I think so. Sometimes it throws me a headline in a strange language, but when I don't click it within a reasonable time, it doesn't keep it up. The most recent was one in Arabic. ^^

I have grown quite googlified lately: Google Desktop, Google Notebook, Gmail and my personalized Google startup page. I haven't installed Google Maps or Google World on this machine. I suppose I could, it doesn't take all that much space I believe. There is a small field for maps at the bottom of the Desktop sidebar, where it showed some random maps from around the world. I had no interest in that, so I cut it out. I mean, if it had shown me maps of where my online friends lived, or places I read about in the news, fine. But random cities around the world? No. Ironically, I would want more intrusive content, not less. A bigger Big Brother. At least as long as he's not evil.

I've had Google Desktop 3 for a few days, and I notice that I read more news than before. As Bjørn Stærk mentioned some time ago, that is not necessarily a good thing. But if it should happen, the Internet is definitely the best place for it, and not least Google. It becomes easier than ever before to go behind the news and look at the societies involved, whether nations or subcultures. Hopefully in the future (if any), Google Translation will also become so good that I can read other nations' newspaper and not least their blogs. If I had not met so many Americans online and gotten to know them, I would probably had a less nuanced view of America, like all too many Europeans these days. Now if Americans could read European blogs too... but they can't, because the average American is proud to even read English, don't mention the multitude of languages used over here.

But that's all far ahead, even if we don't all disappear in a black hole in 2007, when the Large Hadron Collider starts operating at CERN. I've read often enough that the personal computer will by 2020 or soon thereafter have the same processing power as the human brain. Hopefully Google will continue to ease our journey from viewing the PC as an advanced calculator to having it as a trusted assistant and eventually friend...

..or bigger brother?