google: behind the screen

Basically felt there was nothing too revealing here yet it’s not a mere PR reel. That is, while you’ll find this video provides some intriguing chats with some of the ‘behind the screen’ personalities that make-up the who’s who of product develop managers at Google, amongst others, Director, ljsbrand van Veleen, tries to go to the ‘heart of the Googleplex’, to discover, instead, how these keeners search their own ethics while building the world’s most popular user-content indexing/ad machine.

Funny enough, while you get some peek-a-boo interviews to match some of the faces that both make-up and demystify the company’s culture of innovating wizards, you also realize that these same folks are still just human-all-too-human do-gooders caught open handed in the web 2.0 brain factory — working and playing hard, but unsure of how to tame the overall Gorilla they each help to evolve.

Thus, as a counter-balance, the ‘transparency effect’ of on-demand video is alive and well. Director, ljsbrand van Veleen helps us participate with his camera and microphone, and Q&A chronicles, both wince and wisdom, to share all memes for the speaking. At least folks here seem to be speaking with their own words, their own scripts, earnestly scratching their wits when they don’t know. For example, here’s an exchange of a few Google project manager’s both describing and then reflecting about their role:

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I view us as computer scientists… simply responding to the needs of our users. -Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products and User Experience

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Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products and User Experience and Chikai Ohazama, Product Manager, Google Earth, are interviewed by the Director, ljsbrand van Veleen, and asked the following question near the end of the video:

41:30

Q-ljsbrand van Veleen: Aren’t you afraid that political and/or security issues - in the end… could blow up the beauty of the whole thing?

41:40

A-Chikai Ohazama: Not fear… Something we need to definitely address… talk to the right people… to come to the right solutions.

Q-ljsbrand van Veleen: So basically you’re saying, you’ll design the technology… then you’re going to solve those things.

A-Chikai Ohazama: I think that it came from a love for the technology. We saw something that was amazing and wanted to see something happen. A love for what it was .. any big technology creates new perceptions - will cause people react in different ways. This is one of those technologies.

Same question but transitioned to MM…

42:50

A-Marissa Mayer. I view us as computer scientists. We can analyze a problem. We’re not government officials. We’re not policy makers on a global scale. We’re simply responding to the needs of our users.

42:59

Q-ljsbrand van Veleen. With all due respect, but that seems almost naive… considering the scale on which google works…?

A-Marissa Mayer. I’m sorry, but that’s my perspective.

Yep, Marissa’s blunt and to the point. Indeed, she responds unabashedly logical and unequivocal as a computer scientist usually does.

Nonetheless, naturally should she engage the question further? Should we expect her to grasp her larger role in the Googleplex, regardless? Does this go beyond her algorithm? After all, we’re all under an inherent duty of care, whatever industry, as citizen whistle-blowers, for example, in the event that public trust is deemed violated.

As it happens, perhaps at least van Veleen planted a viral query worthy of further analysis at some future point.

Therefore one crucial theme throughout the film/video that deserves whole hearted merit and recognition is the need to develop critical thinking by people when they use Google:

38:00

“… One develops critical thinking by comparison/contrast for multiple perspectives, different points of view, etc. And acknowledging that it’s interesting that they do differ, and further asking why that is…”

In the same Socratic spirit, it’s nice to see the matrix architect himself, namely, Vinton Cerf, VP and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, interviewed voicing both his offence and defense that Google simply encourages the need for good old fashioned critical thinking - explaining that when 9/11 is typed into Google, conspiracy theories seem to be more common simply because they’re empirically far more discussed than the official version. As an example, here’s a video called 911 Mysteries for consideration.

In any case, Cerf’s charging that the users are the ultimate (dis)content. Yet, I’d hazard also, the unspoken statement, that users decide inasmuch as ad revenue can be appropriately applied to long-tail niche content in the assumed text-neutral model.

Conversely, it would be harder assume this with banner ads for broader campaigns. That is, wondering if Google buying Double Click for $3.1 B might challenge this assertion in the future since this merger inevitably asks Google to consider potential banner ad revenue, since that could be significant for blue chip clients. Ironically banner ads especially would likely invite policy discretion for clients with broadcast designs for broader campaigns.

Would you like your employees interviewed about there ethical decisions and put on the internet as a doc?

No doubt there will be more to come since Google was clearly willing here to at least open conversation about it’s behemoth role beyond the conventional product and service boundaries once often assumed.

To better explain, think about this…? How many companies would wish to open themselves up to a documentary style film or video, generally speaking? Would you like your employees interviewed about there ethical decisions and put on the net as a doc?

And, yet, again, this on-demand auditing is becoming the new normal of transparency management, inviting new modes and models of which demand greater open communications and marketing ‘behind the screen’ Would this be an opportunity or threat for your company?

Ok, back to the inquisition, here’s a few ‘let’s really put you on the spot’ questions I would have liked to have asked some of Google’s Product Manager’s, personally:

1. Cool job, definitely. If anything, how do you ultimately prevent Google from becoming Big Brother’s database, since the codes are proprietary, and the US government regularly requires legal compliance with its requests under auspices of fighting terrorism? This, what checks and balances are fundamental to you as related to your own product development record?

2. Are there any policy directions and/or abuses you are personally concerned about that the company has taken flak on?

3. Is there a difference between the company motto, ‘Do No Evil’, and Gate’s quip about Google, ‘Do Less Evil’ when it came down to drawing straws upon entering business in China? That is, obviously providing the Chinese with ‘censorship’ filtering technologies as well as identifying user profiles for the Chinese government, as did Yahoo?

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Aside: I thought the title ‘google: behind the screen’ was a clever repackaging of old media film with added DVD features of the director’ and cast’s commentary, etc., promising exclusive clips ‘behind the scenes’. Also like the fact that Guba provides a mosaic UI overview of indexed serial clips - bit like DVD styled scene selections. Searchable replay video cued clips makes reviewing a whole lot easier, so I inserted the timecodes to the interview quotes used above.

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Q. Welcome to Second Life to provide extra sensory experiences with virtual reality. Does it allow us to live life beyond the ordinary, or are we just pressing our old vines into new virtual bottles…? If not, then how well do we tell the difference, anyway?

As you can see in the picture, with Second Life, people can transform their physical selves into digital avatars. Once digitized, they can evolve new experience to the extent that the program allows their collective creative imagination to invent and empower fantasy.

However, in virtual reality, since ‘anything goes’, paradoxically, now the basic assumptions that hold reality together can be put to the test. For instance, as a teaser, we might consider in ‘Neuromancer’ when William Gibson said that ‘in cyberspace’, experience fully transmutes into a ‘consensual hallucination’?

Yes, ‘consensual hallucination’ seems a useful notion, and, although, considerably bantered, I’m wondering how and when someone decides the ‘hallucination’ is not consensual…

Then — aha! I saw this quote on CNET, titled: Second Life faces Threat to its Virtual Economy:

Groups of Second Life content creators were gathering digitally Tuesday to protest the dissemination of a program they worry could badly damage the virtual world’s nascent economy.

The controversy gathered steam Monday when Linden Lab, which publishes Second Life, posted a blog alerting residents of the virtual world to the existence of a program or bot called CopyBot, which allows someone to copy any object in Second Life. That includes goods such as clothing that people purchase for their in-world avatars, and even the virtual PCs that computer giant Dell announced Tuesday it is going to sell in the digital world.

So, there you have it — the above ensuing ‘commercial crisis’ here for honest paying customers of Second Life, is but a slight hullucinatory ‘reality’ bug… or, said another way, no ghost is being allowed in this deux ex machina.

Apparently there isn’t a consensus that, in a virtual market where prices double, as in any market, then, almost naturally, so should everything else.

In other words, isn’t it ironic that these folks are attempting to monopolize the perception of virtual reality? I mean, why are these objects being considered exclusive scarce ‘intellectual property’ resources when every thread, scrap or pixel of ‘virtual material’ is clearly limitless?

Moreover, the chances are this cloning program is impossible to ‘unplug’ - that is, fake reality bugs will continue to duplicate, replicate, ad nauseum. Otherwise, Agent Smith will be duplicated to spy on your virtual life, to enforce the hallucinatory rules of the matrix.

Anyway, wait a nanosecond, even in the real world, copying a Gucci or a Rolex provides not only a quick buck, but a new black market for the ‘genuine’ fake.

So isn’t Second Life then just discovering the creation of a black market for, well, I guess, in the case of VR, the value of ‘reality’ itself?

Generally speaking, whenever we go through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole, and see the O’s and 1’s, the more it smells sweet or funny, or we start seeing double, the short answer is, when the digital VR genie’s let out of the pixel, there’s no going back…

Another example come to mind for any diehard sci-fi fans out there. Remember the plot of Blade Runner… isn’t detective Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, himself an unwitting replica? If unsure, the director, Ridley Scott, claimed as much, and felt that sci-fi novelist Philip K. Dick who wrote, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, that inspired Bladerunner, did too.

Furthermore, you could well argue that programmed replication is the basis for authentic creative evolution in the VR universe. Specifically, the process of simulation of making life itself, just as DNA and RNA replicate symmetrically in nature.

DMR pixel gold dust? Or, who should really bank on enforcing physical scarcity in virtual reality, anyway?

So, Second Lifer’s obviously have a lot to consider. A lawsuit for maintaining proprietary rights in VR using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act might also be virtually anti-evolutionary.

For this reason, I’d like to appeal to the DMC folks to instead consider applying the Creative Commons approach so they can just credit the creative signature of the makers and, instead, sell there second life designer wares on-line, but as hard goods back in first life reality. Maybe even use a form of Linden-based micropayments for contest reward points, or something. Worth considering, maybe…? I mean, who should really bank on enforcing physical scarcity in virtual reality, anyway?

Meanwhile, for recourse, definitely better to first sit-down, calmly, and discuss the options, like these digitized folks are.

Alas, the’ll be a need to test out the first life beings for those avatars so you know they aren’t just malicious copybot replicants themselves — maybe lurking about to cast proxy votes duplicating real world ballot fraud.

Hm, maybe it is actually the time to consider a ‘Bladerunner’?

Group Photo in Second Life
Originally uploaded by Dean Terry

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Wow - looky that - they’re relaxed, engaged, suspiciously jovial! Almost strange to see portable computing portrayed as commonplace and normal, especially as hip aesthetic brainware, politely placed on the knee for peppy laptalk.

I mean, doesn’t it look existentially cozy for a change to see people using computers in ways that demonstrate a natural everyday environment, a symbiotic co-evolution of friendly happy-go-lucky earnest cyborgs…

If so, might then it be the right time to ask whether the term ‘laptop’ or ‘notebook’ or even ‘computer’ outdated? Nay, perhaps ironically, even dangerously mis-informing, even…

Well, let’s just say, wouldn’t it be better to caption the real story? Consider the effects of using an everyday laptop or notebook computer that’s actually maskerading itself as a desktop studio and interactive global oracle.

Ok, sure, at least the word ‘laptop’ or ‘notebook’ transcends the numerous comics, captions and negative depictions of fax machines, copiers, and computers that made life living hell - provoking perpetual pervasive aggravated assault to our otherwise, sanguine working lives.

And yet, why does the old media have a recurring habit of assuming the character of the new media? You did notice how the telegraphy, namely the Daily Telegraph typed itself, bold face, as the newspaper? Perhaps a a dash of type-apology is in order…

Thus, as it happens, when laptops appear as natural and congenial to manipulate as as the lazy pages of anyone’s perennial book, we might stop and consider what naturally changes, in turn…

For example, the group of people above in the first picture are sharing their screens. The word ’screen’ harkens back to that experience of simultaneous viewing, like a portable drive-in, you could say.

Now, it’s not likely that you’d be so readily willing or able to share the ’screen’ of a book, unless perhaps if pointing out a particular passage, sentence, phrase or illustration.

Also, maybe that’s why the term ’screen’ itself denotes the ’screening’ or implicit ‘filtering’ of (textual) content, transformed more into the flickering scene of moving pictures.

Moreover a ’screen’ of visual or graphical content, thus inviting an at-a- glance opportunity to peek at than just text would allow because a book medium is generally assumed designed for one person to read at any one time.

And, hey, as you know, little text is usually too small to read unless you’re up close, anyway, especially if you’ve got bad eyes, so you’d have to peek directly over their shoulder. Of course, that’d naturally invade their private space.

Briefly note too, outside content and context is required to be either in the reader’s head or be contained within the immediate information environment - meaning the closest alternate medium available - maybe it’s a newsletter, pamphlet, magazine, newspaper, radio, TV, book, or iPod music/video.

In other words, because a screen allows for multiple viewing, content can be viewed by as many people as can effectively permitted to see it. And, as long as you’re on-line, the global oracle is in reach on your lounging lap.

That proprio-sensory privacy then is less structured by-design than the ‘book-as-text-medium’ would allow, so the effect of a ’screen’ literally encourages public participation. Dephic prophesies ready at every click on every screen.

So, as is happens, collaborative sharing of viewership becomes environmentally designed at once accessible and pervasive. Again, conversely, the conventional book medium is a lonely ‘printed container’.

Therefore, in fact, the ’screen’ acts or becomes more like a portable ‘interactive visual theatre’ and an interactive visual theatre, which, at the same time, allows you to create whatever multimedia experience from it as a desktop studio. Yes, both interactive portable theatre and desktop studio at one keystroke!

So, despite the metaphor, while a laptop computer can be described as a ‘notebook’, meaning, merely a place to capture ‘notes’, comments, sketches, and scribbles, etc., it’s portability enables you to wander as a nomad.

But on a profound level you’re now a nomadic hunter and gatherer of information wandering and surfing an interconnected real-time network over the internet with on-demand access to essentially infinite multimedia content. You’re an (un)plugged ‘node,’ or perhaps better transcribed, as a ‘knowd’ potentially producing your opus content just the same.

For all these reasons, perhaps it’s better to ponder your lounging laptop then as a ‘notebook, interactive visual theatre, desktop studio, and consultative community oracle‘ all in one.

Focusing on the ‘effects’ of the technology provides you with more understanding when you consider the transformative value of your next commonplace ‘computer’ purchase.

The need is to evaluate a given technology not by what it happens to be called, but more by what it does and the environment it now enables.

In sum, it’s important to realize how widespread this problem is, that any object describing nouns (figure) seldom describes or refers to the effects or environments they create. And the effects are those things which the user-as-content must actively fill in (ground) to assess what is being transformed. Again this means you’re not really buying a ‘computer’ or a ‘notebook’ (figure) so much as a desktop studio and interactive global oracle.  The need is to evaluate not what it is, but what it does, the environment it now enables.

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