Could Google be God?

MATT MAson

MATT MAson

BROADSIDE
I just read The Last Question, a short story by Asimov, for the first time. He considered it his best piece of work, I can see why (you can too - it's up here: http://adin.dyndns.org/adin/TheLastQ.htm)

It raised a lot of interesting questions, which are so interesting, I'm still not entirely sure what they are, apart from the one above. But I thought this was worthy of discussion here.
 
A

adruu

This Is It
They definitely aren't craigslist and despite the cute slogan, I just dont think a publicly traded company like that will be able to resist the salivating ivy league MBAs and industry consultants that undoubtabley infiltrated the company by now. It just never works that way.

I mean the only way to understand a stock price like that is to see it as a service ultimately to wall street itself.

shame because it really was a good alternative to MS/Yahoo back in 98. Seems like in terms of innovating projects though (ex: yahoo pipes) google is falling off a little from the end user prospective. google phone ? no thank you.
 
D

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
It's a little premature, wouldn't you say? Google isn't even a proper AI yet. Even the searching is getting worse. A few years ago it was really useful but now it's drowning in all this noise. 80% of the time I use google to access Wikipedia/IMDB/Juno(the record store)/free dictionary

Anyway, that story sucks because it denies the second law of thermodynamics.
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
DigitalDjigit said:
It's a little premature, wouldn't you say? Google isn't even a proper AI yet. Even the searching is getting worse. A few years ago it was really useful but now it's drowning in all this noise.
Click to expand...

Yes it is, isn’t it? Some topics are practically unsearchable nowadays, with all the commercial (and mostly useless) crap clogging up the search returns.
 
MATT MAson

MATT MAson

BROADSIDE
I wasn't thinking Google specifically. I just liked the idea of a massive collective computer one day attaining self-realization and rebooting the big bang.

Oh, never mind...
 
S

smn

Well-known member
It is a great story. And I don't think that standard laws of physics (or whatever) really come in to it when "matter and energy had ended and with it space and time". That premise is a license to go wherever you want, which Asimov did.

Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible. AI backend or advertising database? No conte$t.

Anyway thanks for the post. I'd never read the story before.
 
D

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
They call it "science fiction" because it throws out science whenever it's convenient? Why not just call it "fiction" then?

I just think the whole eternal cycle idea is obvious and boring. It's a very comfortable place to be. Nothing will change, everything will be the same.

The whole story is just a set up for that last line. And how does it take place? It's just magic. Something out of nothing.

Asimov may think it's his best story but I think he's done better.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
MATT MAson said:
I wasn't thinking Google specifically. I just liked the idea of a massive collective computer one day attaining self-realization and rebooting the big bang.

Oh, never mind...
Click to expand...

PBF032AD-Reset.jpg
 
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