Taking the God Complex to a new height
Posted on Tuesday, December 20, 2005
at 10:10 AM (permalink)
I've been reading a great discussion of Google that took place earlier this month. (via Matt Mullenweg)
One of the most frightening quotes is about Sergey Brin's expectations for Google:
Brin envisions a day when we as individuals can use the search engine to Google our Genes and find out more about our predisposition to various illnesses, potential reactions to mediciations, food alergies and more as we move into the age of personalized medicine. Brin also has a hunch, shared by some at NIH and the Department of Energy, that Google has the massive computing power and long-term perspective needed to discover new relationships at the intersection of genetics, technology and biology that may lead not only to a better understanding of what causes certain illnesses and abnormalities but also possibly help to foster discovery of cures.
I don't know why, but this gives me the creeps. Not the possible application of search to discover medical cures, but the almost megalomaniacal perspective. I especially like the part about "long-term perspective." Google is seven years old. It went public less than 2 years ago. Back in the Eighties, during the first round of explosive growth for software, we saw a phenomenon called the "God Complex," where a software company becomes so enamored of its success and imagined ability that its goals reach greater and greater heights of hubris. In theory, software can do anything, and if you are a software God, you too can do anything. In practice, great coders are still human. Brin seems to have taken the God complex to heart to an extent I have never seen before. The first time I observed the God Complex in action was in 1984 at Lotus Development Corporation. This was about 16 months after the launch of 1-2-3, and one of the Lotus executives was describing their future plans. He concluded his rather grandiose presentation with the statement "Corporations will continue to buy from Lotus, because they have always bought from Lotus." I never forgot that claim, even though the world has largely forgotten Lotus and 1-2-3.
