Dr Siva Vaidhyanathan was briefly in Vancouver for a talk about his forthcoming book, The Googlization of Everything.
To him, Googlization is the process of the world being processed, rendered and represented by Google.
He argues this is problematic, given Google’s mission to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible.
His concern is that Google’s focus on satisfying the consumer is “fabulous for shopping, but we make a mistake as use the same lens for learning.”
“All Google does is about instant gratification, and that means that we privilege shopping over learning,” he concluded at the UBC event, organised by the Centre for Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education and co-sponsored by the Digital Literacy Center.
The talk can also be downloaded as a podcast via UBC iTunes U.
You can subscribe to podcasts from the UBC Graduate School of Journalism on iTunes U.
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