An Impressive Website

     In chapter eight, The Church of Google, Carr talks about a man named Frederick Winslow Taylor and how he invented his ‘system’, in order to lead into his discussion on the internet and Google. This man Frederick Taylor invented and created the steam engine, which was a huge need during his time period. He and his men who worked on it built it to seek maximum speed, efficiency, and output. Taylor’s ethics of wanting the best type of systems out there to better the world has lead the current day to the idea that having the fastest and most efficient systems is important, like the internet. Today, the internet is the system that works the mind with max speed, efficiency and output, where Taylor’s invention was work of the hands. I agree with Carr that today the internet is one of the fastest, reliable machines designed to carry out the mental movements of what we’ve come to describe as knowledge work. Google is one of the major websites used by millions of people daily and allow people to become educated on whatever they search for.

     One of the goals of Google is to strive to systematize everything it does. To me this means they are only systematizing their website as a search engine and not necessarily its technologies as a whole. Being dedicated as a search engine though is a great resource when you think about it. The ability to type in a question, word, phrase, etc., and get thousands of results to choose from is incredible. Many times people are looking for specific information and the ability to have a surplus of information can be helpful to many people. For example, you could type in a medical question to try to diagnose a disease or illness you have and how to potentially cure it. Or use Google to assist you get info on a research paper. Google can lead to not only untrusted sites like Wikipedia, but also very useful and trusted sites that end in .org or .edu. People try to be data driven and be up to date on everything. The internet allows people to have that kind of knowledge access. Through Google, people can also look at pictures for whether they are looking to buy an item, or perhaps an artist looking up a photo to draw. From researching to picture finding and looking up random info, Google has been a useful source to the world due to its speed, efficiency, and output needed daily by people. It is the number one website currently used worldwide, showing how impressive it is to society.

Jacque Rideout