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Google's inner workings
CULTURELAB
Google’s inner workings
Ramin Rahimian/The New York Times/Redux/eyevine
A peek inside the web search engine is the most comprehensive and readable analysis yet
In The Plex: How Google thinks, works and shapes our lives by Steven Levy, Simon & Schuster, $26 Reviewed by Andrew Keen
GOOGLE’S much quoted mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Ironically, however, the more Google monopolises the world’s information economy, the more opaque the company and many of its products – especially its search engine – have become. It is this lack of transparency that drives our appetite for books about Google. Its search engine might help us find our way around the internet, but as a company with 80 per cent of the world’s search market and an increasingly large share of the global advertising, video, mobile and data markets, Google 50 | NewScientist | 23 April 2011
remains a frustratingly elliptical organisation for us to find our way around. That’s where Steven Levy comes in. After three years talking to Google insiders, he gives us In The Plex, a book which, while occasionally veering towards the hagiographical, is nonetheless the most comprehensive, intelligent and readable analysis of Google to date. Levy is particularly good on how those behind Google think and work. His observations about the company’s culture, with its emphasis on treating engineers “like royalty”, explains both the company’s moral utilitarianism and its self-appointed cult of doing “no evil”. What’s more, his lucid introductions to Google’s core technologies – the search engine and the company’s data centres – are written in non-geek English and are rich with anecdotes and analysis. In The Plex teems with original insight into Google’s most
controversial affairs. There is an intriguing description of the company’s near purchase of Skype and a memorable section on Google’s political fiasco in China. The chapter on the Android operating system and wireless spectrum is also excellent, particularly given Google’s intense rivalry with Apple. Levy is less good on how Google shapes our lives. He is a technology journalist rather than a cultural critic and what is missing from In The Plex is an understanding of how Google is changing the habits of its users. It is as if there is no world outside the Googleplex. Perhaps, for insiders like Levy, a senior writer at Wired magazine, there isn’t. So what is Google’s future? Levy ends In the Plex ambivalently. On the one hand, he acknowledges that Google is struggling to compete with Facebook in social networking. But, on the other, Levy remains a believer in Google’s ability to do the impossible, particularly with regard to CEO Larry Page’s obsession: the development of artificial intelligence. As Levy concludes, the most accurate signpost to Google’s future might be its development of the selfdriving car.
Poetry of motion Electric Shadow by Heidi Williamson, Bloodaxe Books, £8.95/$21.95 Reviewed by Kelley Swain
“IF/ YOUR lover asks you to bite his tongue, Then/ do it/ Else you are alone and bloodless…” So begins Heidi Williamson’s poem If Then Else, in her debut collection Electric Shadow. A footnote explains that the phrase is a logic statement with “no scope for ambiguity”. Yet in this body of work Williamson
harnesses ambiguity, turning logic into poetry. Inspired by a residency at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre, Williamson’s poems move swiftly through a range of material: a Möbius strip is followed, and followed again; and Nobel prizewinner Dorothy Hodgkin’s hands are immortalised within a poem’s frame. Dark, fairy tale-like poems tell of materials that are both transmuted and moulded by force. The ambivalence and violence evoked by these poems is analogous to that present in the fundamental science that shapes our universe.
Why you do that thing Sex, Murder and the Meaning of Life by Douglas T. Kenrick, Basic Books, £18.99/$26.99 Reviewed by Amanda Gefter
IN HIS search for the meaning of life, evolutionary psychologist Douglas Kenrick wants to know why we do what we do, and which of our actions leave us happy and fulfilled. His tour of human behaviour is breezy and engaging, but likely to leave the scientifically minded reader wanting more, as he reveals unsurprising facts about human nature, such as men desire younger women for their fertility. Thankfully, he covers a few intriguing theories, like suggesting that leftist liberals and right-wing conservatives in the US are merely employing different mating strategies. The needless touting of evolutionary psychology’s merits left me wondering if Kenrick’s intended audience is really his academic opponents, rather than the average reader. Still, a book that debunks our intuitive justifications for our behaviour will not fail to entertain.
Google’s inner workings
Ramin Rahimian/The New York Times/Redux/eyevine
A peek inside the web search engine is the most comprehensive and readable analysis yet
In The Plex: How Google thinks, works and shapes our lives by Steven Levy, Simon & Schuster, $26 Reviewed by Andrew Keen
GOOGLE’S much quoted mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Ironically, however, the more Google monopolises the world’s information economy, the more opaque the company and many of its products – especially its search engine – have become. It is this lack of transparency that drives our appetite for books about Google. Its search engine might help us find our way around the internet, but as a company with 80 per cent of the world’s search market and an increasingly large share of the global advertising, video, mobile and data markets, Google 50 | NewScientist | 23 April 2011
remains a frustratingly elliptical organisation for us to find our way around. That’s where Steven Levy comes in. After three years talking to Google insiders, he gives us In The Plex, a book which, while occasionally veering towards the hagiographical, is nonetheless the most comprehensive, intelligent and readable analysis of Google to date. Levy is particularly good on how those behind Google think and work. His observations about the company’s culture, with its emphasis on treating engineers “like royalty”, explains both the company’s moral utilitarianism and its self-appointed cult of doing “no evil”. What’s more, his lucid introductions to Google’s core technologies – the search engine and the company’s data centres – are written in non-geek English and are rich with anecdotes and analysis. In The Plex teems with original insight into Google’s most
controversial affairs. There is an intriguing description of the company’s near purchase of Skype and a memorable section on Google’s political fiasco in China. The chapter on the Android operating system and wireless spectrum is also excellent, particularly given Google’s intense rivalry with Apple. Levy is less good on how Google shapes our lives. He is a technology journalist rather than a cultural critic and what is missing from In The Plex is an understanding of how Google is changing the habits of its users. It is as if there is no world outside the Googleplex. Perhaps, for insiders like Levy, a senior writer at Wired magazine, there isn’t. So what is Google’s future? Levy ends In the Plex ambivalently. On the one hand, he acknowledges that Google is struggling to compete with Facebook in social networking. But, on the other, Levy remains a believer in Google’s ability to do the impossible, particularly with regard to CEO Larry Page’s obsession: the development of artificial intelligence. As Levy concludes, the most accurate signpost to Google’s future might be its development of the selfdriving car.
Poetry of motion Electric Shadow by Heidi Williamson, Bloodaxe Books, £8.95/$21.95 Reviewed by Kelley Swain
“IF/ YOUR lover asks you to bite his tongue, Then/ do it/ Else you are alone and bloodless…” So begins Heidi Williamson’s poem If Then Else, in her debut collection Electric Shadow. A footnote explains that the phrase is a logic statement with “no scope for ambiguity”. Yet in this body of work Williamson
harnesses ambiguity, turning logic into poetry. Inspired by a residency at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre, Williamson’s poems move swiftly through a range of material: a Möbius strip is followed, and followed again; and Nobel prizewinner Dorothy Hodgkin’s hands are immortalised within a poem’s frame. Dark, fairy tale-like poems tell of materials that are both transmuted and moulded by force. The ambivalence and violence evoked by these poems is analogous to that present in the fundamental science that shapes our universe.
Why you do that thing Sex, Murder and the Meaning of Life by Douglas T. Kenrick, Basic Books, £18.99/$26.99 Reviewed by Amanda Gefter
IN HIS search for the meaning of life, evolutionary psychologist Douglas Kenrick wants to know why we do what we do, and which of our actions leave us happy and fulfilled. His tour of human behaviour is breezy and engaging, but likely to leave the scientifically minded reader wanting more, as he reveals unsurprising facts about human nature, such as men desire younger women for their fertility. Thankfully, he covers a few intriguing theories, like suggesting that leftist liberals and right-wing conservatives in the US are merely employing different mating strategies. The needless touting of evolutionary psychology’s merits left me wondering if Kenrick’s intended audience is really his academic opponents, rather than the average reader. Still, a book that debunks our intuitive justifications for our behaviour will not fail to entertain.