IS GOOGLE JUST A SEARCH ENGINE?

Is Google just a search engine?

The short answer is "No." In fact, no search engine is just a search engine, if you use it in the right away.

If you, like me, are searching for news items or other reports you remember seeing elsewhere, if what you want are details, you're using Google (etc.) more like an expanded memory. If I want to "recall" details on that news story about a dolphin that helped rescue whales, I can use "dolphin--whales--rescue" to probe that memory just as I would to probe my own internal memory, and get the story. It's cool, too.

Of course, we do something very similar when we search for something we don't remember seeing before. If we get hits, perhaps it is fair to say we are probing someone else's expanded memory, or better yet, the expanded memories of everyone who has posted, blogged, or otherwise put something up for the search spiders to find.

Let's just call it the memory of the world's or society's group mind. It's not inaccurate, and it might give us another angle of attack at all those forces that want to regulate, tax, or restrict the Internet. Don't argue in terms of net neutrality and innovation, or free speech. Tell 'em to keep their mitts off the group mind!

Maybe even a bumper sticker or two:

NO THOUGHT CONTROL FOR THE GROUP MIND
FREE THE GROUP MIND
DON'T BIND THE GROUP MIND

Hmm. I can't say I really like those. Not punchy or pithy enough.

Got some better ones?