The Art of Google

Or perhaps this post really should be titled Art about Google?  While my Google-Fu is pretty good, I don't practice at a high enough level to consider it art.

Anyway, while Google there is plenty of art on Google (Google is intimately involved in digitizing as many books and as much artwork as it can and posting what it can legally and most probably stashing away what can't be published (yet) due to unduly long copyright regimes), there is not so much art about Google.

I have a throw-away line in one of my plays about a character being amazed her mom knows about Google.  (And I have to check my timelines to see if that is remotely plausible or just should be struck out.  The latter most likely.)

Beyond that I can think of one fairly recent documentary and one novel that really revolves around Google.  I'm not saying other don't exist, but they haven't really come to my attention.  Feel free to point out what I've missed in the comments.

I'll start with the documentary, which I have to admit I only know about through reviews.  There was a chance to see a free screening in Vancouver, but I just couldn't make it.  I suspect it will be the kind of thing that pops up occasionally for random screenings (or could be found through Google-Fu).

Anyway, it is called Google and the World Brain - a documentary by Ben Lewis.  It takes a very dim view of the notion that Google is just going to vacuum everything up, riding roughshod over intellectual property rights, but most egregiously monetizing it later.  In general, I have little patience with the later part of the argument, in that the advertising that Google sneaks in here and there seems a very small price to pay for the sheer awesomeness of having search engines that actually work.  I remember when the equivalent was very weak in the early days of the web, and you basically had to know the address you were looking for ahead of time.  Those were dark days. (What can I say, I'm a dinosaur.)

I realize not everyone is so sanguine, but really no one is forcing you to use Google.  Everyone draws the line somewhere, and for me, I don't mind using Google for searches, even if they make money off me (though it couldn't be much given how I ignore all on-line advertizing), but I really didn't like the idea that Google was going to go through my Gmail account, so I don't use it at all (probably haven't checked it in 2 or 3 years), just as I have completely avoided Facebook and Twitter.

I also know that in the real world, not in the ideal world of some digital activists, most corporate copyright holders have been absolutely terrible stewards of the art and literature to which they hold the rights.  Artists aren't going to be paid anything either way, and having Google make it more accessible (or at least better publicized if it can't be published in full) seems a slightly more positive outcome.  I really thought that the opt-out clause was a reasonable way to get around the truly depressing issue of orphan works where no copyright owner can be traced.  This isn't a small issue in some fields of art (particularly when looking into minor poets with only occasional publications in literary journals).  But the one-size-fits-all copyright extensions pushed by Disney (and rejections of reasonable compromise on opt-out) has made it quite untenable to do anything about it.

Anyway, Lewis basically pisses on the claims occasionally made, implicitly at least, by Google that as long as one's intentions are good (see freeing up orphan works of art), then nothing is off limits.  I admit this is a tendency/problem among smart people who only look at the problem in terms of promoting access (with small ancillary benefits coming to them) and don't put themselves in the shoes of copyright holders.  There is an element of group-think going on, as well as just a feeling that the world should be this way (and not bound up by unreasonable rules that are clearly at variance with the spirit of the Founding Fathers).  I feel this way all the time -- that the world I want to see is slipping further and further out of reach.  I think it is completely unobtainable in the U.S. at this point, and probably out of reach in Canada, though it would be easier to put Canada back on track, simply because the way the rules of the (political) game are structured.  While this is a total tangent, if I ever do write more about Travelling Light (the play about the particle physicists) there is a tangible sense among a lot of scientists that because what they do is in the name of Science (or Truth) they shouldn't be held back by petty concerns like what is the cost/benefit ratio of an experiment.  Or in a totally different vein, engineers always bemoaning how politics has taken over the decision-making process.  (It is hard to believe but most public authorities were put in place specifically because reformers of the day felt it was the best way to allow engineers to rise above short-term political calculations.)

I've kind of exhausted this concept, but I will admit I am completely in love with Google's idea of scanning all the books in the world to be kept in print indefinitely. I'd like it even more if they set up their own country and eliminated copyright past 25 years and just let people check out any book they wanted.  (A slightly more principled version of Pirate Bay, I guess.)  Maybe they'll do something of this sort after they decide to pull out of the E.U. after one too many absurd rulings like the one last week where a Spanish man's right to be ignored on the internet means Google has to remove links to the public record.  I don't care what Eric Posner says, this is a stupid ruling that undermines the very nature of the internet and free exchange of ideas.  I've had my doubts about the E.U.'s creation out of whole cloth a bunch of weird (and largely unenforceable and probably meaningless) "rights," and this is where I just turn my back on the whole E.U. experiment.  I think they've really gotten things wrong and have no idea of the unintended consequences of these rules they are promulgating.  (Well, I have worked myself up and have not even gotten to the novel.  It's time for a break.  Part two will probably follow tomorrow.)