Google Blows My Mind

As you may very well know, Google is in the process of ruling the world. Currently, they are one of the biggest information aggregates in the known universe, and so much ad revenue is being poured into their tinkering adventures that they're able to pump all sorts of advanced software into pop culture without the masses even batting an eye. In fact, after watching their December 7 public speech (see it here), I realize that one of the major goals individuals with this company strive for is to operate behind the scenes, out of public awareness like, dare I say it, a social consciousness.

Okay, that might sound like I'm going on a limb, but work with me.

Carl Jung, Freud's underling until a theologically related falling out, suggested that humanity is tightly held together by systems of shared experience in what he referred to as the collective unconscious. There are some uncanny parallels between this system and current evolutionary psychology research: People consistently show a cross-cultural preference for images depicting the Savannah, are more prone to fear stimuli that existed in their ancestral history, and have specific internal "drives." But I want to look at the Internet as a collective unconscious. Trending is a remarkable example. Around the world, people refer to and research specific events more than others--examples include the Chilean coal miners, Oscar buzz, Lady Gaga--and random global attentional shifts seem to happen willy-nilly. In this way, a non-real social reality is developing at our fingertips. Music, art, business, science, all of our social constructs are being linked together in a way that has less and less physical reality and more and more social reality, a literal shadow existence that can only be understood through learning. For thousands of years, culturally formulated realities co-existed simultaneously around the world, in different languages and using a variety of mediums; now, though, these man-made parallel realities, the realities mankind has forever used to combat mortality, are fusing together, eradicating the culture-based systems of individuality and resulting in human universals. The fascinating thing is, companies like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other information conglomerates are now able to probe humanity and find how much attention is being directed at what.

I know I'm not saying anything new, but this stuff's been on my mind lately and I wanted to bring it up. I'll continue thinking about this, occasionally typing little rants, and maybe even spark conversations along the way.