Is Google, the giant information search engine, going to kill journalism? This was the question raised by two journalists recently in an 8-minute-fictional documentary on the Googlization of news.
In a post-journalistic, post-literate world, Google's automated text filtering system will replace the gatekeeping function of media professionals with computer-based search robots or bots. Bots are used to filter out and rewrite news perceived to be irrelevant, offensive or objectionable to specific sections of an individualized media consuming audience. Stories, in this scenario, will be electronically groomed for consumption by the Google-Khan.
The GoogleKhan is my reference, of course, to the 13th century Mongol empire, which swept through so-called civilized societies at the time. GoogleKhan is also a play on the merger between Google and Amazon.
In the film, Googlezon becomes king of content.
In the future, the idea that empires are built around the acquisition and control of territories becomes obsolete. In the future empires are built on the acquisition of predicting patterns of human behavior and thought.
Orwellian, yes.
Far-fetched, no.
The total customization of news and information dynamically produced by fact-stripping robots is not fiction, it is happening as we breathe.
As Google continues to pound away at controlling the market shift from print to online content production, journalists Matt Thompson and Robin Sloan strike a raw nerve.
According to PC World, "Thompson and Sloan envision Google expanding its acquisitions and then combining Blogger, G-mail, and Google News services plus Amazon's recommendation system into the Google Grid, a universal platform for users to store and share media."
What happens to journalistic ethics in this increasingly digitized world?
What happens to independent thinking and the right to dissent in a participatory democracy when the news becomes filters and stripped of detail and fact?
In some ways, I think this has been a slippery slope that consumers have bought into, regardless of the consequences.