The Googlization of Everything

From the University of California Press:

Siva Vaidhyanathan

(And Why We Should Worry)

In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling mission--"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible"--and its much-quoted motto, "Don't be Evil." In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google--and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google's global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the "evil" it pledged to avoid.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia, is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System.

Advance Praise:

"A powerful and gripping tour de force. Siva Vaidhyanathan uses Google
to examine our capacity for blind faith and to worship innovation as
an end in itself. You cannot read this book and remain unstirred."
-- Tim Wu, author of The Master Switch and Professor, Columbia Law School

"This is a critically important book because it's really about the
Googlization of All of Us. This is a brilliant meditation on
technology, information, and consumer inertia, as well as an ambitious
challenge to change how, where, why, and what we Google. Vaidhyanathan
forces us to think long and hard about taking responsibility for what
we all know and how we know it."
-- Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Magazine

"Vaidhyanathan is everything you could want in a cultural critic:
funny, fantastically readable, and insightful as hell. It's always a
treat when a new Vaidhyanathan comes out."
-- Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net)

"Siva Vaidhyanathan's lively, thoughtful, and wide-ranging book makes
clear, in detail, how Google is reshaping the way we live and work. He
finds much to admire, but also challenges us to not only use Google's
services, but to go beyond them to create a new and genuinely
democratic information order."
-- Anthony Grafton, author of Codex in Crisis

"This is an important and timely topic, and Vaidhyanathan's head and
heart are in the right place to guide the public through the thickets
of 'googlization.'"
-- Paul Duguid, co-author of The Social Life of Information

"Finely written and engaging, this is a book for anyone who has used Google."
-- Toby Miller, author of Makeover Nation: The United States of Reinvention