Credit: missha

Okay, not a conspiracy. But still reason enough to force ourselves aware of just how omnipresent Google is becoming. From a little op-ed I wrote for the American Prospect this week:

When I heard that Google was rolling out yet one more application, in the form of Google Buzz, the first thought that came to mind was that the Internet is starting to feel like a one-company town. I was soon online, catching up on the fascinating story of Pullman, Illinois. Built on the edge of Chicago by the Pullman Palace Car Company in the 1880s, the 300-acre town was the company's answer to the industrial-age conundrum. How do you reap the efficiencies of gathering workers in one place without descending into urban chaos? Pullman did it by controlling everything. Workers and their families attended Pullman schools, shopped in Pullman groceries, and worshiped in Pullman churches.

All went along well enough in Pullman, it seems, until the summer of 1894. That's when a wage riot was put down by U.S. marshals and army troops, according to a contemporaneous report by federal investigators I stumbled across. The Pullman Company's paternalism was blamed for creating a repressive and unstable environment for workers.

The tools joyously employed by me as I indulged these dark musings about how Google is turning the Internet into a company town? Google Search, naturally. Google Books. Google Scholar.

The comparison between Pullman the company's relationship to Pullman the town and Google's relationship to the Internet breaks down upon close examination, of course. The Internet offers choice, not limitation. (As Google may well find out as Buzz attempts to compete with Twitter and Facebook.) Perhaps more important is that unlike for the workers of Pullman, Google's omnipresence is beneficial for both the company and its clients. Still, those distinctions don't completely negate the fact that Google is becoming an ever larger part of how many of us experience the cyber environment. As dependent as many of us — governments included — are becoming on one company, it's only sensible to bring to the forefront the trade-offs we make in that relationship.

Jane told me she liked the last paragraph, so for her, I'll re-post it. If you don't want to spoil the ending, run away now! If not, read on:

One reaction is to diversify: Hotmail instead of Gmail, MapQuest instead of Google Maps, AOL Instant Messenger instead of Google Chat — though that would mean losing the accumulated benefits of linked services. Another reasonable response is to focus efforts on improving our (new) media literacy so that we're more mindful of how much even free stuff can still cost. If we don't force ourselves to be aware of those trade-offs, we risk stumbling into an increasing dependence on yet one more company that's too big to fail.

Publishers Weekly has some nice things to say about "Science Next," the volume from the Center for American Progress in which I'm thrilled to have a pair of chapters:

Science Next: Innovation for the Common Good from the Center for American Progress
Edited by Jonathan D. Moreno and Rick Weiss. Bellevue Literary, $16.95 paper (288p) ISBN 9781934137185
Bioethics professor Moreno (Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense) and science reporter Weiss, both of the Center for American Progress, have compiled a compact volume exploring the status and future of many hot topics in science and public policy today, which should leave readers appalled at the past eight years and hopeful for the next. Despite subsidized Big Oil, infrastructure collapse, food inspection system failures and ever worsening wildfires, this volume brings hope into focus with reports of innovation that will enhance lives, from caregivers to those running out of fresh water, from No Child Left Behind to university research. Concise, informative contributions include internet co-creator Vinton Cerf on why the U.S. should respond to climate change like it did to Sputnik, and CAP senior fellow Rick Weiss proclaiming bluntly that “federal tax dollars should not be supporting schools that persist in teaching myths in science classes.” There's also numerous recommendations from CAP's 2008 National Innovation Agenda for enhancing the utility, visibility and “sexiness” of science in the U.S. (Apr.)

I will say this: if you're interested in getting quickly up to speed on the scientific challenges and possibilities facing the Obama Administration after eight rocky years, you could do worse than this book.

The Nexus Friend Grapher taps into your Facebook social connections and, with a couple clicks of the mouse, maps them out spatially. In short, it's really, really cool. The Grapher uses the nature of your and your friends connections to one another to chart out how closely — in what ways — you're interconnected. I found it to be an almost frighteningly accurate representation of my social history, going all they way back to about the sixth grade, New Jersey circa 1989. Facebook certainly does know a tremendous amount about us and our places in the universe, which really becomes clear when you ask it questions like we're doing here.

The brightest constellation on the right side of the display is made up of what I might loosely term my Washington DC crowd. That is, people I either worked with or regularly drank beers with after work back when I was living in the District. You'll notice that connections between nodes there run every which way, connecting everyone to everyone else. That closely matches how things are in real life, where you regularly have conversations that go, "Do you know Bob? Oh, of course you know Bob!" Most of that crowd knows much of the rest of that crowd. And to the top and right of that blob are my Waxman people, representing my time spent on Capitol Hill.

The bright star that attaches that dominant group to that second largest network on the left is my partner, Jane. Flowing off of Janie are all of her family, her hometown friends, and our mutual friends here in New York. Flowing up and to the left of that are my old high school friends. The inner band represents my core group of fellow troublemakers in my graduating class. Slightly farther out of the center is a second band made up of those good friends from, mostly, graduating years other than my own. To the left and below are a smattering of people with whom I kicked it back in grammar school. Making up the outer ring of that area of the chart are what we used to call "school friends," those people who you got on well with but only really had a social connection between the hours of eight o'clock and two o'clock each day.

And that, in a chart, is more or less my first three decades of social existence. Get your own here. It's pretty neat.

At the risk of coming across as self-involved or some such thing, allow me to share a small thrill. I was wheeling my luggage through the Austin airport on the way to SXSW when I glanced up and saw the cover of the most recent issue of Seed, with my short piece on personal genetic testing services listed on the front cover. I haven't done much print yet, so it was a new and, I'll admit, enjoyable experience.