Bow down for your Google overlord
The Church of Google has touched me. While they have been around for quite some time, I did not come in contact with their Church on the street, nor did they knock on my door. It was the mighty Stumble Upon who came to my aid in my time of need.
It is hard not to think about how polarizing religion sometimes can be when reviewing the events of 9/11 on its tragic 9th anniversary. Especially when the debate surrounding the new destination of ground zero is so heated. While the concept of God in most cases remains mostly invisible, there are those among us who worship something a little more tangible and of which proof of existence is abundant.
The Church of Google worships their God as a female Goddess. She is all knowing, omnipresent, potentially immortal and infinite. They believe that Google is the closest thing mankind has ever come to directly experiencing a deity. Creating an online religion has been done before, remember the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Internet preaching is also not something new. But while highly entertaining and mostly tongue in cheek, the Church of Google certainly has some points.
Googlism confirms that what once was just a man made corporation, has grown out to be something of mythical proportions. The worship of a man made company is not a new thing, Apple fanboys have been doing it for quite a while. However, Steve Jobs remains a person whom frequently reveals himself to be someone of flesh and blood whereas Google has become more of an entity on its own.
It is hard to imagine a life without Google. It is the only entity that answers my prayers. I only have to do a quick Google search to find all information about any issue troubling me. I am even creating an afterlife as we speak. By uploading my opinion and thoughts on the Internet my ideas will live on in a Google’s cache. Not as glamorous as heaven, but still something more tangible. Google has changed our way of finding and organizing information, and some even claim it will change the way we do science. If Google is God, then science and religion meet in a very special way.
The Church of Google presents their list of proofs and a lot of them seem to make sense. However one of them is up for serious debate these days, their do no evil policy. The issue with China and the recent discussion about Net Neutrality aside, Google remains an uncontrollable company who perhaps does not want to do evil, but is still capable of it as Josh McHugh from Wired points out. This causes a lot of fear among us mere mortals. This ancient fear of losing power to a machine goes way back to the entire cyberpunk genre. And as some claim that Google has already done evil, are we therefore currently losing the agency battle? It goes without saying that we do once Google is widely considered a God. One does not question the ways of a God.
Whereas other Gods may bestow volcanic eruptions, floods, plagues and death of firstborns upon us mere mortals, the potential wrath of Google has not been experienced yet. Who knows how much more powerful Google can get? Lord Google knows who we are, who we know, where we are and what we’ve done, even what we are thinking. She remembers all our prayers and merely asks us to not question her ways in return. And therefore for now, like a good God fearing Googlist should, I bow down my head before our Google overlord and hope her wrath shall never fall upon me.