Google and the World Brain Page #3

And also, the modern world

of spy craft for states

and also the modern world

of criminality.

And the modern world of insurance

and health care.

All these things have this idea

that you grab all this data

in order to become very powerful,

you create a differential

in your ability to see information

versus the ordinary person.

And you create these new incredible

castles of power,

but it's OK, it's not just

traditional power mongering,

because you're making the world

more efficient.

I was a little boy in the '70s

growing up in India,

watching re-runs of Star Trek

on our family's black-and-white TV.

And from that, those times,

the picture of a Star Trek computer

was deeply ingrained in my head.

As a little boy, I

was just fascinated by the fact

that you can walk up to a computer

and ask it,

"Computer, what's the atmosphere

of that planet?"

That was just the most fascinating

thing to a little boy

and, from that day on,

it was my dream to build

that Star Trek computer.

Only later would I grow up

and realise it's really hard,

because computers

don't understand language.

And I went through this brief period

of disbelief as a graduate student,

where I didn't think I would reach

my dream in my lifetime.

But thanks to Google

and all the technologies

that we have built here,

and what I see in the pipeline,

I'm closer to my dream than ever.

Um...

Google were and are free to do

what they want with the scans.

And why should that concern us?

I mean, part of our ethos

and part of our objective

as a library

is to make the information that's

contained in our library available

as free of charge as we can possibly

make it to anybody who needs it.

And if Google is going to do that

on a larger scale, that's fine.

If they are going to make money

out of it down the line, why not?

You know, they've invested

a lot of money in it.

Um... There's no such thing

as a free lunch.

Who wouldn't want to have all

of the world's knowledge available

to everyone on the planet?

The problem is that Google,

as an intermediary in this process,

has certain interests

and has a certain agenda

that is not always transparent.

If you, in Silicon Valley,

you have another job,

which is you're building

this new life form

that's going to take over the world

and Google is providing

the memories for its brain

or the other companies

are providing the memories,

and this is something

that's openly talked about.

It's all human knowledge

in books and out of books

woven together

into a single entity

that's accessible by anybody,

anywhere in the world, any time.

And that "all knowledge"

is transformative.

It really kicks up the civilisation

in our society into another level.

Shortly after the launch

of Google Books,

in different events, I ran

into Larry Page and Sergey Brin

and had this brief exchange

with them about the potential.

And, you know,

there was a characteristic

Google-founder response,

which was a kind of glint

in their eyes and a smile

and the sense that this was

just the beginning

of something much bigger than even

you at this point can imagine.

At Harvard, we only permitted Google

to digitise books

in the public domain,

but the other research libraries

that Google first went to

permitted Google to digitise books

covered by copyright.

As soon as you get

into the copyright area,

things get rapidly complicated.

We're allowing Google

to scan all of our books,

those in the public domain

and those still in copyright.

We believe it is legal,

ethical and a noble endeavour

that will transform our society.

Legal because we believe

copyright law allows us fair use

of the millions of books

that are being digitised.

Fair use is a piece of American

copyright law that allows us

to make copies without

ever asking any permission,

without paying any fee

for certain carved-out uses.

I happen to think Google's

fair use defence is strong.

One of the things that courts

have done,

over the last decade or so,

is decided that search engines,

who routinely make copies

of information,

are making fair uses when they do it

in order to help people

find information

that they are looking for.

One of the things Google

has done is provide links

to places where you can

buy the book.

They scanned, but they did not

release the copy.

You could not search,

except for key words.

You could not see a page,

except for snippets.

They were trying to allow

indexing and searching,

without allowing people

to get copies.

And we will protect

all copyrighted materials,

your work in that archive.

Let me repeat that.

I guarantee you we will protect

all copyrighted materials.

I assure you we understand

that providing public access

to materials and copyright,

particularly those still in print,

would be unlawful.

One of the things that you need

to understand about Google

is that they try to roll out

projects first

and then, to think about

the consequences later.

So you will often see them experiment

with something that looks very cool,

maybe the Google Street View

Project...

Google launched Street View in 2007,

part of the search engine's

long-term goal

to create a virtual

3D map of the whole planet,

right down to street level.

But investigations have revealed

that Google Street View cars

were collecting more than just

photographs for their databanks.

Their antennas were also hoovering

up personal information

from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks,

including Internet history

and passwords.

I think the case of Google

collecting Wi-Fi information,

it reveals a complete lack of respect

for privacy within the corporation.

Such projects often reveal that

Google does not fully understand

the social consequences

of its own work.

We actually do more search

queries in China alone

than any other search company does

in any other single-national market,

by which I really mean

Google in the United States.

So we certainly do aspire

to be a World Brain.

I think HG Wells was, I mean,

he is well known for having been

quite prescient

about a lot of the things

that he envisaged.

Sure we don't have

the time machine yet,

but pretty much the rest of it

was dead on.

We have a product, which is a very,

very popular product,

it's called Baidu Wenku,

the Chinese name of it

is the Baidu Library.

It allows people to upload

materials that they have

that are either

of their own creation,

or that they have the intellectual

property rights to, to our site.

There isn't an area

of human knowledge

that hasn't been filled out

and made more rich and wondrous

by the fact of the Internet.

I am often sort of shocked

by people who see it

as the beginnings

of this dystopian future.

I embrace it unequivocally.

The Fundamental Knowledge System

which accumulates, sorts,

keeps in order

and renders available

everything that is known

centres on Barcelona.

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