The Google Guys
Brin and Page
Larry
Page and Sergey Brin, the Rollerblading math whizzes who launched
Google, may not look like your average business tycoons, but they stand
firmly in the tradition of the great American industrialists of the
last century. They’ve brought the ethic of speed, automation, and
efficiency—the ethic of Henry Ford’s factory—to the work of the mind.
What is Google but a lightning-quick assembly line for knowledge?
Before the two Stanford buddies invented their miraculous search
engine, finding facts and other information was drudgery. You traipsed
through the corridors of libraries. You pored over journals and
magazines. You read books. Now research is a breeze. Three billion
times a day we ask Google for advice, and 3 billion times a day Google
replies with a neatly arranged list of suggestions. It takes about a
second. How could we live without Google? The fact is, we couldn’t. In
just a decade, the Internet search engine has become as deeply embedded
in our personal lives and in society’s routines as the
internal-combustion engine. But has Google made us any wiser? Probably
not. As we zip between snippets of information online—click, click,
click—what we sacrifice is the kind of deep thinking that comes only to
the calm, attentive mind. Unlike old-fashioned libraries, the Googlized
Web offers no quiet corners for rumination and reflection. An assembly
line exists to be in motion. Page and Brin brought the Internet economy
back to life after the dotcom disaster. Their intellectual legacy will
likely be equally momentous, if less laudable.
