A Nation of Voyeurs

"Dazzlingly fast, vast, and precise, Google has made our lives appreciably easier. The first tool truly to make sense of the white noise that is the Internet, Google has become essential research for everyone from sales people calling on new accounts to single people taking another spin with blind-date roulette. It's reconnected long-lost biological brothers and battalion buddies. And who dials 411 anymore, when it's cheaper and faster on Google, and you don't have to explain to some headset-wearer in Terre Haute how to spell Worcester?...

'It's the collapse of inconvenience,' says Siva Vaidhyanathan, assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University. 'It turns out inconvenience was a really important part of our lives, and we didn't realize it.'

Google has quietly but unmistakably changed our expectations about what we can know about one another. But this search engine that fields 150 million queries a day is of no use in helping us determine how much information we deserve to know about one another, or how we should proceed once we know it. Should we confront friends, dates, or co-workers with the damning details we unearthed while cyber-snooping? Or should we say nothing?" [The Boston Globe Magazine]

Phil Wainewright also has an interesting Google story that shows just how far the search engine has encroached into our everyday thinking.

In addition to Googlert, Mike Dierken points out SearchAlert, a similar service he has set up that doesn't require you to have your own Google API key.

"SearchAlert.net helps you stay on top of the latest news and information from the Web. It is simple, easy and free - the way it should be.

As a SearchAlert.net subscriber, you enter search terms and then SearchAlert.net continually monitors the big Web search engines and sends automated e-mails to you when new results appear.
We do the work so you don't have to!"

I just now signed so I haven't received any notices yet. Mike notes that he'll be "adding posting new results to blogs via the Blogger API 'real soon now,' " which would certainly be useful, but I'd like to formally request notices via an RSS feed.  :-)