I get heartburn when non-hackers explain technology. Tonight on Fresh Air Terry Gross interviewed Ken Auletta, author of the new book Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.
Fresh Air’s and NPR’s audience skew older. They are more educated than the general population but when it comes to technology, overall intelligence doesn’t a technologist make.
Auletta is a media critic and author of such objective titles as World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies, Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way, and Greed and Glory on Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman. With that list we shouldn’t be surprised that the author’s perspective on Google leans a bit on the alarmist side.
The first half of the program focused on explaining what Google does, how Gmail works, and how GPS can be used to advertise to consumers. I take issue not with Google nor do I stake a claim on either side of the privacy debate. I take issue with programs like Fresh Air that introduce a topic like GPS-based advertising, cloud computing, or Google’s search algorithm using an old curmudgeon journalist and a (normally very intelligent) interviewer who prefaces questions saying “Google has had a lot of, like, advertising breakthroughs that have been very threatening to the broadcast and print media.”
When speaking of cloud computing, Auletta notes the pros of cost savings in server infrastructure then:
The minus is: do you trust Google? Do you want to store that information with a company? Will they guard your secrets, or will they share them with advertisers or with someone else?
That was it. Save a bit of money and hand you secrets over to the devil. He made no mention of productivity improvements, enhanced collaboration, or any of the other benefits of cloud computing. Why should he? Fear sells more books than information.
Thanks to this broadcast hour there is now one more CEO with a pronounced fear of remote servers, managed IT services, and cloud computing. That’s not what we need in today’s fast-changing technology environment. We need people on shows like Fresh Air who can discuss technology objectively and with knowledge. Not from the perspective of an media fearmonger with a book to sell.
(Quotes courtesy of NPR, available here.)
