Becoming Digital

When I think of our digital society the first thing that comes to mind is the internet. The internet digitally connects the whole world. There are many applications that internet is used, yet more and more applications are created everyday. The web successfully converges all current media, new and old, by digitizing it and making media liquid. There is one internet company that survived the dot com bubble burst and is now in the forefront of making digital media easily accessible.

Google is one of the world’s largest internet search engine sites. They have been one of the fastest rising stocks over the past two years since going public. Google has been in recent news. Google is going to buy out YouTube, a popular video sharing site, for 1.65 billion dollars. This news appeared on October 10, 2006. On October 31, 2006, news broke out that will also be buying a small wiki startup company JotSpot. CNN reports that Google has spent over 130 million to acquire fifteen small companies last year. Are the predictions of Epic 2014 or Epic 2015 going to come to fruition?

Epic 2014 was created some time in mid-2004 when Google went public. Epic 2015 was created as a sequel and was made in late 2004 or early 2005. Both Epic videos are similar but the major difference is the outlook of the world when Google or actually “Googlezon” takes over the world. I believe Google is on the track of Epic 2015 with all the company buy outs. Google is cutting into Microsoft’s sector because they bought Upstartle, a company that made an online word-processing program and the new wiki software from JotSpot. Google now is creating a more marketable online alternative to Microsoft Office. They have already made Google Maps from another company they bought, Keyhole.

Even though it cannot be visibly seen as of right now if Google has integrate all the web technologies that they have acquired recently, a product similar to the “Google Grid” can be in the works at Google labs. It seems that Google is going to make our society even more digital. This is a mind blowing, but slightly depressing realization. It is like the commercial about GPS systems on a cell phone. The person is looking for a store and is using the cell phone for directions but when another person takes away the phone the person is completely lost until he gets the phone back. This commercial is hilarious right now but by Google creating an even more digital society, we may actually become completely lost without Google. Right now, I go in circles when I need to find problem set information and Google can’t find exactly what I need. I can’t really imagine if I were more immersed in the internet or a new similar digital personalized media device such as “EPIC”.

“EPIC” or the “Google Grid” can be scary things if they can be made by Google. A central digital place, where people can access edit, publish, search and store their life can become reality. The digital world would be reality and that is when we become digital. Some people may hold out, but eventually they will give in like Facebook or MySpace. Becoming a more digital society may lead to a lack of reality. Someone needs to stop Google before they create the “Grid”.