Thursday, February 15, 2007

Even by French standards this is completely idiotic

From the back cover of the book "Google-moi (America's second mission)":
"Our mission is to organize all the information in the world" ; "Don't be evil". These are the two mission statements of Google Inc. studied by Barbara Cassin in this political essay. She demonstrates that this mission can be expressed through two concepts : "organize" and "do good". How can one not make the parallel with the final words of Bush's speeches, following 9-11, when he prays to God to wage a "just war", "the combat of good against evil". The extraordinary story of the creation of Google, and its development leading up to its spectacular IPO, the "best" search engine, by two Stanford students, allows Barbara Cassin to take a new look at the decisive question of democracy's cultural dimension. Google is the champion of cultural democracy, but without culture and without democracy. Because it is not a cultural leader (information is not knowledge), nor a political one (click-through democracy is not democratic).

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