InfoSpeak Volume 1, Number 1:

"Google, search technology, and human nature"

Length: 22 minutes

Topics discussed:

How Google changed the way we work
How easy access to information may change how we think
How is a blog like a cave painting?

Links to Topics from this Show

Thoughts on this premiere issue

Hello and welcome!

As Joseph Janes reminds us in our first issue of InfoSpeak, humans have an innate need to be heard. We are deeply curious, compelled to understand each other and the times we live in. We possess a relentless drive to know everything going on in the world, all the time.

And so we turn voraciously to our computers, and Google. We search.

It seems to me that the Internet is neutral. It places no more emphasis on material facts than on qualities of mind. It holds a mirror for us to gaze into intently, one reflecting the myriad facets of curiosity.

Search is many things: from a vulgar information brothel to the most sublime ideals shared by humanity. I wonder how our expanding use of search technology will influence the particular direction into which our society will plunge.

Now that we have computers that work o.k. most of the time, access to the World Wide Web, and "good enough" global searching, perhaps we can look at the year 2006 as the end of the first phase of the Internet Age. Our expansive dreams of instant information access are finally starting to come true. Advanced search technology is now taken for granted, seen as an essential tool to make life easier, and the name of that tool is Google.

In this exclusive interview for InfoSpeak, Professor Janes points out how we all want to be heard; internet search (and for that matter, this podcast) reflects this fact perfectly. The question now, as he says, is how are we going to be found?

Google, although an extraordinary and evolving instrument of knowledge synthesis, can offer only a tiny part of the vast accumulation of ideas and artifacts that we humans have acquired and hung on to through the centuries. We are just scratching the surface with web pages. There is way too much information in our world to put it all on the web, let alone find it.

What will be retrievable and what unimaginable forms will Google's software descendents create in say, 100 years?

Will the power of search change what we think and do--what we are--for the better, as on his best days, Joe Janes dares to hope?

~Michael Wood, Program Director and Host

Our Guest

Joseph Janes is Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academics at the Information School of the University of Washington. A frequent speaker in the US and abroad, he was the Founding Director of the Internet Public Library and the co-author of eight books on librarianship, technology, and their relationship, including Introduction to Reference Work in the Digital Age and writes the "Internet Librarian" column for American Libraries magazine. He holds the M.L.S. and Ph.D. from Syracuse University, and has taught at the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the State University of New York at Albany as well as at Syracuse and Washington.