What Would Google Do?


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Hardcover
257 pages
ISBN 9780061709715 Published Jan. 2009
HarperBusiness
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What Would Google Do?
By Jeff Jarvis 

Related Blog Posts
Google Reader
Posted July 25, 2011 10:36 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

We were discussing the new Google eReader via email here last week, when Roy replied with the following:

Big Shock: Roy has never used Google anything. I think it's a government conspiracy. Happy Tuesday!

Now, I don't know that Roy thinks it's literally a government conspiracy, but I do know that he is concerned, as many are, about one company having that much knowledge of, access to, and control over our personal information—even if that company's unofficial motto is "don't be evil." I use Google for many things, so they could potentially know a lot about me if they wanted to. And, while I'm somewhat wary of that, and worry about the issue of privacy in general online, I don't think it's a conspiracy to gather information on us. (Though, if it were a government conspiracy to do so, would that better or worse than if it were a corporate conspiracy? And what if it is a government conspiracy, but not of the United States government. What if it's a conspiracy of the city council of Mountain View, California being led by Councilmember John Inks. We're on to you, Inks!)

All that said, if Roy is concerned about Google's effect on our privacy specifically, or culture in general, I think he is right in his decision not to use it. He's just casting his vote. Pre-Internet, we mostly voted with our pocket books for businesses, charities, churches, etc. That was what determined our communities. Yes, there were generational movements in which people voted with their feet and collective voices on specific topics such as civil rights and women's suffrage that were paradigm shifts in our history, and we've always gone to the polls to elect our representatives in government, but our everyday votes for which businesses to support with our hard-earned dollars was the driving force of our everyday lives and communities. With Google and so many other companies on the Internet, we're now voting with our fingertips, with our behavior and usage online, and if one is wary of Google monopolizing our information or our online lives, the only way to vote against it is to not use it—not use their search engine or email, document or picture hosting, reader or calender. Or, if one doesn't like Facebook's privacy or copyright policies, the only way to not condone them is to leave Facebook.

Personally, I am more concerned about how the internet is affecting public knowledge in general, and my brain in particular. Nick Carr tackled these issues in his 2008 Atlantic article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? He addressed it further, quite brilliantly at book length, last year in The Shallows, and he touched upon the topic again recently after the release of a study in Science. From his post about how Google is creating Minds like sieves:

The study, "Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips," was conducted by three psychologists: Betsy Sparrow, of Columbia University; Jenny Liu, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison; and Daniel Wegner, of Harvard. They conducted a series of four experiments aimed at answering this question: Does our awareness of our ability to use Google to quickly find any fact or other bit of information influence the way our brains form memories? The answer, they discovered, is yes: "when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it." The findings suggest, the researchers write, "that processes of human memory are adapting to the advent of new computing and communication technology."

I'm not suggesting anyone stop using the great tools that Google provides. I'm not going to stop using Google anytime soon. In fact, even though I'm usually a late adopter of new technology and social networks, I've even been tinkering around with Google+ a bit. But I do think there are a lot of things to to consider when we bring new technologies into our lives—especially addictive technologies like television and social networking sites, and technologies we use as a mental crutch like search engines or Google maps. We should be mindful of what we're adopting into our lives, how we're doing so, and how it's affecting us. Like everything in a democracy, the onus is on us to stay informed of the issues and cast our vote. And there are a great number of books on these topics, covering the nearly miraculous strides being made in information technology and some of the side effects of those advances. Some pertinent to the story of Google include:

Just as we monitor the nutritional value of what we eat, we should remain vigilant in monitoring our intellectual intake. And, these books all look at the larger issues of how Google is affecting our lives and society, serving as the "nutritional facts" of our intellectual diets.



Friday Links
Posted July 15, 2011 10:55 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

➻ Jeff Jarvis, internet impresario and the author of What Would Google Do?, believes that Regulation would be a disastrous response to phone hacking. He asks four very good questions, such as "What activities are to be regulated? Activities that are already criminal, like News Corp's, should be prosecuted as crimes. So does speech itself become the target?" He also wonders what would happen if you have government oversee the press and "The watched become the watchers' watchers." I think the hardest, and potentially most onerous, question to answer if the government were to regulate the press is the following:

"Finally, who is to be regulated? In other words, who is the press?"

That's the key question. Alan Rusbridger posed it in his forceful soliloquy on this amazing week: Is Huffington Post the press? Guido Fawkes? By extension, is any blogging citizen? Any YouTube commentator or Twitter witness-cum-reporter? Yes, we wrangle with this same question in the United States, but in the context of who should receive the rights and protections of the press—namely, shield laws—rather than who should be under the thumb of a government agency.

I'm not as much of a techno-Utopian as Jarvis, but I do agree with him when he writes:

The goal must not be to further solidify the hegemony of the media-government complex but instead to bust it open. We have the tools at hand to do that: journalists, the public they serve, and their new tool of publicness—the internet.

If you'd like to explore this further, I can never recommend Charlie Rose too often, who last night sat down with the aforementioned Alan Rusbridger, along with Alastair Campbell, Roger Cohen, Josh Tyrangiel, Catherine Mayer and John Burns for a very thorough conversation on the matter.

➻ Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, and Jay Rosen, author of What Are Journalists For?, are debating an issue very relevant to Jarvis's last statement above—how the internet is affecting journalism and the news industry—over at The Economist. Rosen takes the position that "the internet is making journalism better," while Carr writes that "the facts show is that the internet boom has done great damage to the journalism profession." After detailing some evidence for his position, Carr ends his opening remarks on a somewhat hopeful note, writing:

The future may be sunnier. Professional news organisations may find ways to make more money online, and they may begin hiring again. Citizen journalism initiatives may begin to flourish on a large scale. Innovations in social networking may unlock entirely new ways to report and edit the news. But for the moment that is all wishful thinking. What is clear is that, up to now, the net has harmed journalism more than it has helped it.

Rosen counters in his rebuttal remarks that Carr is focusing too much on the profession of journalism, and asks if "the profession of it [is] equal to 'journalism,' that democratic beast?" He believes that "journalism is more than what professional journalists do," and holds fast to his belief that the net is improving journalism, "the democratic beast."

It's a fascinating discussion. If you're interested in reading the full debate, including moderator Tom Standage's remarks, you can find both the opening statements and rebuttal statements at The Economist website.

➻ Edward Nawotka of Publishing Perspectives takes a look at an important component of the situation—the business model—asking Will Users Pay for Previously “Free” Content?

➻ Chris Guillebeau wrote of something somewhat related yesterday in his Notes from a Cold Bathroom Floor in South Africa—the difference between the work of constructing consistent blog posts and "shipping" them on schedule even if they're not perfect or profound, and the writing of a book, which he knows will also not be perfect, but that he wants to be better than "good enough."

The story of why he was writing the notes on a cold bathroom floor in South Africa is alone worth clicking on the link. It shows the incredible work ethic and hustle in the man. And the explanation for why he takes different approaches to different incarnations of his work—the battle between "shipping" and not sending it out before it’s ready, and apparent peace he's made with that struggle—is informative for all of us doing creative work.

➻ Regardless of what work you're doing, the real key is simply to keep working. Or, as Pixar animator Austin Madison put it in a letter recently published on Letters of Note, PERSIST.

I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, "in the zone" seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time.

The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems.

In a word: PERSIST.

PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision. Remember what Peter Jackson said, "Pain is temporary. Film is forever." And he of all people should know.

It's a message that we hear over and over again, but that I don't think we can ever hear enough.

➻ In other news of conflicting desires, I'd like to leave you with a thank you note from thxthxthx: a thank you note a day:

➻ I wish the folks behind Wugazi had a video I could embed here, but since there isn't one, you get Milwaukee's own, De La Buena. (The last time I saw them play, they covered Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," which was a particularly lovely thing to do.)

De La Buena (Live) @ Club Garibaldi from Erik Ljung on Vimeo.



Friday Links
Posted Oct. 22, 2010 11:29 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

➻ Vanity Fair has an excerpt up about The Blundering Herd at Merrill Lynch from one of this year's most anticipated books, All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. From that excerpt:

In the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, there was no more infectious disease on Wall Street than Goldman envy. Goldman Sachs, perhaps the most storied name in all of American finance, had gone public only in 1999, the last of the big firms to do so. After the I.P.O., Goldman’s mind-boggling profits were on full display. Starting in 2003, Goldman went on a run the likes of which had rarely been seen in American business. In just three years, its revenues more than doubled, to $38 billion, as its profits skyrocketed. In 2007, C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein received a bonus of more than $68 million. Even junior traders made millions. Who wouldn’t be jealous of numbers like those? UBS, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank—they were all stricken, to varying degrees, with Goldman envy.

No firm, though, had it worse than Merrill Lynch. And once the crisis struck, there was no firm for whom the disease would prove to be more fatal.

The authors of the book are Bethany McLean, a writer for Vanity Fair and the coauthor of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time), and Joe Nocera, a business columnist for The New York Times and author of Good Guys and Bad Guys: Behind the Scenes with the Saints and Scoundrels of American Business (and Everything in Between). It is due to be released next month.

➻ Scott Belsky (author of Making Ideas Happen), Daniel Pink (author of Drive and many other fine books), and Laura Vanderkam (author of 168 Hours) were chosen for GOOD magazine's GOOD Guide to Making Work Better about "productivity, procrastination, and getting off your butt and back to work." Here are each of their productivity mantras:

Scott Belsky: "Less ideas, more action."

Dan Pink: "Get to work."

Laura Vanderkam: "Do more of what matters. Do less of what doesn’t."

To get more tips from each of them and find out what each of them has to say about technology's effects on productivity, head on over to the GOOD slide show. (hat tip to the good people of Portfolio.)

➻ The New Yorker's Jenny Hendrix wrote a great review of a book I've been looking forward to for some time—Marcus Boon's In Praise of Copying.

In Praise of Copying is not an investigation of the ethical dilemmas of copying but a Stein-like affirmation of the mimesis that happens everywhere and everyday. Boon sees copying as fundamental to existence, part of "how the universe functions and manifests." Even on a molecular level, he writes on his blog, "all objects are made up of other objects." We cannot learn without mimicking (whether it’s learning to write a paper or learning how to catch a football)—but the way copying is defined in legal terms obscures this fact. Boon encourages us to rethink terms like "subject," "object," "different," and "the other," in order to "account for our fear of and fascination with copying."

If this book is anywhere near as illuminating as David Kord Murray's Borrowing Brilliance, it's worth picking up. And if you're interested in the topic from a purely business perspective, you may want to check out Oded Shenkar's Copycats.

➻ Richard Florida, author of The Great Reset and a slew of other books on the creative class—the man who, in fact, coined the term creative class—posted a gallery of the 20 Most Innovative States on The Daily Beast. He tells us in the introduction to the gallery how he defined them:

Though some argue that the rate of American innovation has declined recently, our economic recovery depends on a renewed investment in and commitment to innovation. The rate of innovation is likely to accelerate in coming years, as capital shifts back to invention and entrepreneurship in the real economy.

Our ranking of the most innovative states is based on two metrics: (1) the number of patented innovations per capita, and (2) the share of high-tech companies.

Unfortunately, Wisconsin did not make the cut. Apparently cheese curds aren't innovative.

➻ Stewart Quealy recently interviewed Aaron Goldman, author of Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned From Google about, well... Marketing Lessons From Google. From that interview:

SQ: When it comes to consumer mindshare, you claim it's a zero sum game. What does that mean for the Facebook vs. Google rivalry as these two giants cross into each others' domains?

AG: It means all-out war. There are only so many hours in the day and attention span in the hours. The company that can help people make better, faster decisions will win. To be sure, those decisions can be related to information, commerce, and/or entertainment. Help me find quick answers, buy stuff I want, and connect with cool people and content, and I'll give you the lion's share of my time and attention.

I would give you a list of more books on Google, but that would take days to get through. Just check out Ken Auletta's Googled and Jeff Jarvis's What Would Google Do?

➻ Rebeca D. Costa, author of The Watchman's Rattle, did a fantastic job of Reframing the Issue over at The Powell's Books blog, asking one simple question:

So the central issue we must now face is this: what happens when the complexity of the problems we need to solve exceed the cognitive capabilities we have evolved to this point?

Read on to find the answer.

➻ With a thousand kisses...



Jeff Hayzlett's Business Library
Posted April 27, 2010 8:35 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

If you know who Jeff Hayzlett is, it is probably from his appearances on television or his Twitter footprint. But the chief marketing officer of Kodak is now venturing into the wonderful world of analog with his new book, The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing?, being released by Business Plus in May. And he has done something in that book that I wish more authors would do. He has included an appendix in which he lists his "Business Library 'Must' List." It gives you an idea of what has influenced him most over the years (and, just maybe, an idea of what to expect from his book). It includes:

Not only does his book get extra points from me for including a list of his favorites, Hayzlett himself gets extra credit for using a Garrison Keillor quote to introduce the list: "A book is a gift you can open again and again."



The 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards of 2009
Posted Dec. 15, 2009 3:00 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

The 800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—And Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Viking Books, 624 pages, $32.95

Even though Too Big to Fail was written during the same year the financial collapse occurred, Andrew Ross Sorkin has written what we predict will be the definitive book on the subject. Sorkin not only tells a gripping “perfect storm” story—reporting the gory details as our 401k’s disappeared and our financial system became nationalized—but he humanizes the players as well, resulting in an imminently readable, albeit lengthy, book.

It’s a sobering reflection and a critical reminder of what transpired in recent financial history. But it is the great stories and detailed, insider information—the sense one gets of being in the room while history is being made—that will place this book among the greats.

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Leadership

best in category ➻ Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading By Listening by Roger Nierenberg, Portfolio, 128 pages, $19.95 | Leadership is something that can be learned. However, the most respected leaders are not textbook cases, but those who wield the necessary traits and knowledge with a very personal sense of purpose. A parable, which Maestro is, is an ideal way to create a scenario for that sense of purpose to develop, as ideas are presented in ways that are interpreted personally by those who read them, rather than listed as bullet points or chapter summaries. By using the metaphor of a conductor and his orchestra, important details are revealed, from interpersonal communication skills, individual effort to benefit the group, group dynamic to celebrate the individual, and the role that listening (both physically and intuitively throughout all experience) plays in creating the most successful results.

best of the rest:

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Management

best in category ➻ The Four Conversations: Daily Communication That Gets Results by Jeffery Ford & Laurie Ford, Berrett-Koehler, 238 pages, $19.95 | At the core of management is the practiced skill of communication. The Fords present four kinds of the conversations and the best situations to use each of them. More performance conversations (asking for promises) and less understanding conversations (are you OK with all of this?) are needed, they say.

best of the rest:

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Marketing & Advertising

best in category ➻ Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan & Julien Smith, John Wiley & Sons, 271 pages, $24.95 | Social Media took off in big ways this year, and while technology has become an important tool for communication, marketing, and advertising, Trust Agents reels the tech-excitement back in by advocating a not-so-new element that is essential: trust. If the people who put out the messages aren’t people we’d like to work with and buy from, their messages, no matter how easy to broadcast, won’t hold their weight. It’s not about how to master technology, but about being the kind of person, the kind of company, that people like to do business with. This book is filled with prime examples, great stories, and hard facts that convince us not to be blinded by innovation as we communicate with our audiences.

best of the rest

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Sales

best in category ➻ A Seat at the Table: How Top Salespeople Connect and Drive Decisions at the Executive Level by Marc Miller, Greenleaf Publishing Group, 174 pages, $19.95 | In A Seat at the Table, Marc Miller shows that selling is based on the simple concept that the only thing a customer desires is value. The value this book will have for salespeople is that in the discussions of the customers need for value, Miller guides the reader step by step how to provide strategic help for their customers and deliver new and different forms of value.

best of the rest

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Finance & Economics

best in category ➻ False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World by Alan Beattie, Riverhead Books, 321 pages, $26.95 | Alan Beattie not only provides engrossing snapshots of mankind’s economic history; he demonstrates how naturally fragile economies are—and continue to be—and how they are guided by the choices we make, not by some invisible hand. It’s a great lesson in these uncertain times that we are—or at least can be—in control of our own economic future.

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Entrepreneurship & Small Business





best in category ➻ Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur by Pamela Slim, Portfolio, 340 pages, $25.95 | “Should I go solo?” The collapse of companies and careers over the last year has many asking themselves exactly that question. It’s the avalanche of concerns that follow like “What would I do?” to “Do I have enough money?” that stop most. The power of Escape from Cubicle Nation is that it removes all the roadblocks to saying “Yes.”

best of the rest

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Biographies & Narratives

best in category ➻ The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy, PublicAffairs, 272 pages, $26.95 | In The Match King, Frank Partnoy brings Ivar Krueger, the match king, and exciting (though terrifying) time to life. We learn how he cornered the market on matches in his native Sweden and using “creative” accounting was able to ride that success to riches beyond belief until the market collapsed and so did his house of cards. So brilliant is Partnoy’s portrayal that I wanted to keep reading the book even as I walked to my car from the office at night. A great story, told well—there is nothing better.

best of the rest

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Current Interest

best in category ➻ Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—And Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Viking Books, 624 pages, $32.95 | How could we not pick a book on the financial crisis to lead the Current Interest category this year? And if we are going to pick a book on it, how could it not be this one? Too Big To Fail is the definitive book on the events leading up to, as well as on the characters involved in, the financial meltdown. In his reporting, Andrew Ross Sorkin has managed to weave together an entertaining narrative and recreate a nearly unbelievable sequence of events on Wall Street and in Washington—one that will likely be referenced as long as the topic is studied.

best of the rest

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Personal Development

best in category ➻ Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life by Rodd Wagner & Gale Muller, Ph.D., Gallup Press, 243 pages, $24.95 | Wagner and Muller contend that it is a myth, or a rarity at least, that the best work happens when one heroic person who is somehow more superiorly gifted than average wrestles an insurmountable task and wins. Instead, Power of 2 proposes that a great partnership can more reliably produce transcendent work by capitalizing on the strengths of both persons engaged in the venture. It’s not a surprise then that Power of 2 was published by Gallup Press, the experts on strengths theory, and it is a pleasure to read a book that encourages collaboration based on strong research and communicated through enjoyable stories, particularly at time when many people are more often encouraged to “look out for #1.”

best of the rest

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Innovation & Creativity

best in category ➻ The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger L. Martin, Harvard Business Press, 191 pages, $26.95 | Design thinking is a popular trend in innovation thought this year and a number of good books submitted to this category offer various and useful treatments. The Design of Business by Roger Martin lays out the most applicable system to integrating design thinking into an organization or applying it to a singular problem. Martin also shows just how design thinking can reside harmoniously with more analytical or quantitative approach to strategy. Using memorable metaphors, Martin brings his professorial experience to the topic teaching the uninitiated and the theorist alike this new way of problem solving.

best of the rest

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Big Ideas

best in category ➻ What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis, HarperBusiness, 257 pages, $26.99 | Don’t be confused. This book is not about Google. Jarvis is delivering the virtues of clickable, linkable, searchable, and transparent using the Internet powerhouse as the metaphor. The thought experiments in the final third of the book (Google Cola, Google Capital, and The United States of Google to name a few) make concrete the ways in which the web is quickly changing what we expect from those who serve us.

best of the rest

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