{"id":214,"date":"2014-09-26T23:00:29","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T23:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=214"},"modified":"2014-09-26T12:37:36","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T12:37:36","slug":"googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html","title":{"rendered":"Googling Google: bigotry and hypocrisy found"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soyons fermes, purs et fid\u00e8les\u00a0; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n’ont pas c\u00e9d\u00e9.<\/i><\/p>\n

Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in.<\/span><\/p>\n

Charles de Gaulle<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

I regret that it has taken me so long working on my h+ Magazine review of Google Inc’s best-known futurist book\u00a0The New Digital Age<\/em> (2013) – a target of Julian Assange’s ire in his most recent book<\/a> – but I am confident that my review\u00a0will be as comprehensive and useful to readers as possible.<\/p>\n

While I have no complaint about the main thesis of the book, that the internet is liberating and cannot be dominated in the conventional sense by states, I do object to the apparent value system that Google attempts to advocate in the book. I find it scatty, hypocritical,\u00a0bigoted, and paradoxical. It goes a long way in explaining why Google sided with the US government against personal liberties and privacy in the NSA spying scandal exposed by Edward Snowden, while pretending to oppose repressive regimes around the world.<\/p>\n

Google’s value system in the\u00a0book is inconsistent and poorly argued, and in many ways it appears to be contrary to the book’s own thesis – swimming against the tide, as it were – by arguing\u00a0that government\u00a0attempts to control the internet are futile and “information shy”, and then trying to argue that our peace and security also depend on making the internet obey the law. I was particularly surprised by Google’s poor analysis that portrayed censorship in China and censorship in Germany as two entirely different models, one unacceptable and the other acceptable,\u00a0simply because one is based on Chinese norms and laws\u00a0(which are\u00a0socially unacceptable, according to Google), and the other is based on German norms and laws (socially acceptable). In short, Google tries to make Chinese censorship of Falun Gong appear paranoid and unjustified, but tries\u00a0to depict Germany’s censorship of Neo-Nazis as\u00a0necessary and justifiable for social stability. This attempt to portray two entirely identical censorship models as different by using buzzwords smacks of propaganda\u00a0rather than good scholarship, as do all of the culturally biased allegiances that Google demonstrates in its book.<\/p>\n

So, although I’m friendly to Google’s depiction of the internet as\u00a0liberating because it is hard to police, I don’t find any compelling reason to subscribe to Google’s argument that our lives will\u00a0depend on the internet\u00a0being rigidly controlled and at the mercy of the law. Google’s favoritism towards liberal democracies\u00a0and the value systems that inform their censorship laws, while rejecting other value systems as paranoid, is simply not justifiable and tells us more about Google’s own prejudices\u00a0than those of any regime.<\/p>\n

The good thesis that Google touches on but fails to expand on – namely that the internet is an ungovernable space and this is why it is friendly to dissidents – is something I am very friendly towards. It corresponds with the premises of\u00a0my own 2013 techno-liberation thesis, CATALYST<\/a><\/em>, which goes even further to theorize\u00a0that modern states are doomed to failure as a result of the spread of technologies that empower individuals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I believe that in the coming decades, the technologies\u00a0available to us all will come to encompass a large variety\u00a0of unprecedented liberating personal\u00a0enhancement options\u00a0in the physical world, as well as the virtual<\/em>. These will\u00a0include new reaches into synthetic biology,\u00a0medicine, personal security, and personal manufacturing like 3-d printing. These technologies, and the people using them, will be impossible for states to effectively fight or contain.<\/p>\n

I pray that the\u00a0future of the virtual world\u00a0– and then the real\u00a0world<\/em> – will be at the mercy of high-tech anarchists rather than states.<\/p>\n

\n

By\u00a0Harry J. Bentham<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HJB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soyons fermes, purs et fid\u00e8les\u00a0; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n’ont pas c\u00e9d\u00e9. Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,17,63,72,18,66,40,62,45,44,15,89],"tags":[138,90,139,124,2,137,125,91],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-edward-snowden","category-futurism-2","category-international-relations","category-nsa","category-politics-2","category-publishing","category-synthetic-biology","category-techno-progressivism","category-transhumanism","category-us","category-wikileaks","tag-eric-schmidt","tag-google","tag-jared-cohen","tag-julian-assange","tag-lordre","tag-the-new-digital-age","tag-when-google-met-wikileaks","tag-wikileaks-2"],"yoast_head":"\nGoogling Google: bigotry and hypocrisy found - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Googling Google: bigotry and hypocrisy found - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Soyons fermes, purs et fid\u00e8les\u00a0; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n’ont pas c\u00e9d\u00e9. Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-09-26T23:00:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-09-26T12:37:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/81t4gMrmNRL._SL1354_.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harry J. Bentham\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Googling Google: bigotry and hypocrisy found - L'Ordre","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Googling Google: bigotry and hypocrisy found - L'Ordre","og_description":"Soyons fermes, purs et fid\u00e8les\u00a0; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n’ont pas c\u00e9d\u00e9. Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html","og_site_name":"L'Ordre","article_published_time":"2014-09-26T23:00:29+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-09-26T12:37:36+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/81t4gMrmNRL._SL1354_.jpg"}],"author":"Harry J. Bentham","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html","name":"Googling Google: bigotry and hypocrisy found - L'Ordre","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/81t4gMrmNRL._SL1354_.jpg","datePublished":"2014-09-26T23:00:29+00:00","dateModified":"2014-09-26T12:37:36+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/81t4gMrmNRL._SL1354_.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/81t4gMrmNRL._SL1354_.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/09\/googling-google-bigotry-and-hypocrisy-found.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Googling Google: bigotry and hypocrisy found"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/","name":"L'Ordre","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Harry Bentham","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e","name":"Harry J. Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. He edits The clubof.info Blog (http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harry-J.-Bentham\/e\/B00D4MSEY0\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/author\/hbentham"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}