Google

First of all,

"If you walked around with a Google T-shirt, people would think that’s a hip thing to wear." (Professor Russel S. Winer, quoted in Planet Google Wants You)

hahaha

no.

I suppose I am like this Firger guy because I use Google search and G-mail, and I enjoy both of them in that they are useful for what I need to do (which is mostly look up information on hollywood celebrities and email it to all my friends. Google is essentially a very fat issue of people magazine.) But I am different in that I don't feel the necessity to (hyper-) link all parts of my life to the internet/Google/youtube/whatever. Google just stays on my computer and it's there all day when I'm away at school or work, and then I come home and it kisses me on the cheek as I walk through the door and asks me how was work as we sit down with the children to eat the delicious meal that Google has baked for us.

Jeff has a pretty good post on the advertising and acquisitions (haha "google's toybox") so I don't really feel the need to talk about that.

But I am interested in the notion of the "aptocracy," which is, like, totally a crazy thing that I have never seen discussed before but that I've noticed many of the elements that define this thing. So I understand Vaidhyanathan's definition of the aptocracy as a social attitude that values "regimental procedures" and other "forms of numerically quantifiable achievement" like, for example, the ITEDs or the ACT or whatever. And essentially, once these types of values are in place, the aptocracy just leans on itself, and eternally perpetuates this cycle of evaluation based on "numbers" because the big people in charge got there specifically because they excelled in this very system, and so they keep it that way. And Google utilizes these same techniques of evaluation both for hiring employees as well as structuring the ways in which their "internets" work.

Which, ok, maybe that's good? Vaidhyanathan seems to think so, claiming that "This focus on standardized, predictable tasks as the measure of achievement is ostensibly fair" (although he does confess that occasionally there's a stinker that somehow makes it through the Aptocracy even though that individual is NOT as qualified as the evaluation seemed to indicate). So great, I guess this system has been pretty good at getting qualified individuals into influential positions/jobs/etc.

But my concern is that these evaluation techniques (focusing almost exclusively on standardization) might be excluding incredibly talented people from opportunities to participate in a society on a level where they can make significant impacts, just because these people scored shitty on their ACTs (or whatever). I have a hard time believing that"numbers" can really be the only thing (or even the most important thing) that indicate whether someone is "good" at something. (this doesn't even apply to people either. Google searches follow this same pattern of evaluation, and I have FREQUENTLY been unhappy with search results, not finding what I need but getting a ridiculous amount of worthless results instead.)

So I guess, yeah it seems to be working, but do we really know what we are losing due to the exclusivity that results from a society that values standardization over everything else? I don't know.

And Yahoo, what a goofball. I just went to the Yahoo page and I was blown away by how immature the whole thing looks. It's got ads coming out of its nose, and everything about looks so lame (like all the CUTE LITTLE ICONS on the side, for like sports links and news and whatever. so dumb.) and even the logo looks crappy, it's all like purple and looks like the title to a children's story (although, in all fairness the Google logo is JUST BARELY more "mature" looking, what with it's crayola theme and all). In a search engine, I pretty much just want a search engine. I don't need all that silly extra junk that's all over the place (in fact, it's pretty hard to tell that Yahoo even is a search engine just by looking at it). I guess, it's just not as professional feeling as Google, and it feels oooooooold.

Oh shit, how hip is that. This guy is EDGY.