when the Docs mocks

'You don't get it. I built this place. Down here I make the rules. Down here I make the threats. Down here... I'm God..' 

--Trainman, The Matrix Revolutions.

(before you read on, I would like to tell you that I have been warned not to be 'geeky') 

 

The Internet is a world, its a world built on code, content and context. Sure, I didn’t make this world. But I have grown up with it, watching the information highway go from two to six lanes, while the back alleys transformed from forgotten forums to social networks. I would like to think that my familiarity with the Internet gives me some credence; not the ability to build a new world, but at least the satisfaction of bragging and threatening noobs. I would like to believe that unlike most users, I can find another way in the web, solve problems and get work done. 

 

Yet like everybody connected to this information pipe-dream, I am subject to the threats and actions carried out by the people who actually built this world or have been geeky enough to take it over. Cutting a long story short, I am scared of Google. Not because I don’t like it, or that its not user friendly enough, but because a single glitch in Google's 'gears' can ruin my day, make my hard work disappear or worse still, simply malfunction. While most of America and the UK watched in horror as their gmail boxes refused to yield, it was the evil simplicity of Google Docs that stole roughly 6 hours from me. 

 

A simple form connected to a simpler spreadsheet refused to be restructured. Every single change I made, would disappear after I refreshed my browser. After hours of trying I realised that I had been punched in the stomach, by the 'don’t be evil' trainman. And it hurt like hell.

Maybe its true that it’s only when technology doesn’t work that we notice its existence. All I have to say is, I know you’re out there Google, and I am watching you.

 ---Geek signing out

PS: this author has another reason to fear Google, last year it stopped people from accessing his anti-google views by labelling his blog as 'spam'. I don’t know about Lessig, but I am praying that spiders and robot code won’t find this too offensive!