In 2005, John Battelle, one of the original editors of Wired magazine, published an excellent anthropology of the Internet entitled The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.
Wired magazine is awful, woke propaganda today. Google is awful, woke propaganda today. Before these companies were awful, they were great.
Battelle and his book, which I have not read in years, but which still leaves an impact on me, represents some of the great things about the vision behind Wired and some of the great things about the vision behind Google.
I am not a Luddite who hates all technology. I hate evil uses of technology. And what has become of Google is evil.
I would like to encourage you to not be a Luddite around innovation, but to be able to have a sense of the tech tools that are beneficial to your goals. It is important to be able, as well, to be able to distinguish between those and tools that are designed and wielded with an effort to bring ruin to good people. Google has not always been weirded as a tool to bring ruin to good people.
How Google Almost Changed The World
Google’s original algorithm, written by Larry Page as a student, is brilliant. It uses math to ask and answer this beautiful question: “How do I give the person searching exactly what that person wants?”
What a powerful question.
That is a question that empowers the individual.
Change is not bad. It is bad change that is bad.
And somewhere around 2015, Google, as an organization, abandoned that powerful mission when that question was supplanted at Google by a faction seeking to ask a different question: “How do I give the person searching exactly what I want him to see?”
It is the difference between curation and empowering the user. The different between a newspaper and search. It is the opposite.
In one, you — the user of the software — are being spoon-fed what a person wants you to receive. In the other, you are getting exactly what you want.
Google was poised to empower individuals to an extent never before known. In doing so, it was poised to do massive good.
Google was poised to change the world by the amount of power it put in the hands of anyone who understood how to properly use this technology — even regular folks. And for about 18 years, from 1997 until 2015, it did that.
In 2015, I could feel something finally give way, though. I began to feel the precision knife that was Google turn into a dull blade. Through my interaction with the software, I could “feel” the company’s internal policy struggle shift.
Google Used To Be A Precision Tool, Now It Is Most Effective At A Different, Though Less Beneficial Task
Google used to be a precision tool. It turned into something hardly useful. In fact, Google has become hardly more useful than the 1992 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia. At least The World Book Encyclopedia from 1992 comes with the assurance that the presentation of the ideas contained within are unchanged for the last thirty years.
Google, on the other hand, can’t promise you 30 seconds of permanence in its claims to deliver to you unvarnished truth and unbiased science.
Google does this, though: Google promises you a temperature check on the most recent “woke” psychosis of our day. And, admittedly, that is meaningful for something. However, for serious thinkers, that means Google is not the effective research tool it once was.
And by serious thinkers, I mean anyone ranging from a 4th grader doing a book report, to Noam Chomsky trying to figure out why socialism always seems to fail. That 320 million strong segment of the American population is no longer served by Google as anything more than a temperature check on the latest woke psychosis.
What Do I Really Mean When I Say “Google?”
When I say Google, I refer to the search algorithm. It is the most important part of Google. It is the technology that earned the company a place in the pages of the dictionary. Dare I say, no matter how big Google, Alphabet, or any parent, sibling, or subsidiary company grows, the search algorithm will always be the most important part of Google.
Because it was the part that began to change the world.
And, dare I say — still can.
The original algorithm is now in the public domain and can be used by anyone to build a search engine, like the original Google, which was poised to change the world for the better.
Today, Google does not feel like a company that will change the world. It is stale, establishment groupthink. It is control, curation, and conformity.
Those are terribly boring and un-creative things. They are, in fact, destructive things.
The best of Google is likely behind it.
The seven years since 2015, have represented Google riding on the coattails of the spirit of 1997. Google has finally arrived at that inevitable day in which the janitors and conformists of the world invaded the power structures of that company and supplanted the creators in the halls of that place.
“Woke” Is Not Creativity, It Is Conformity
Writing as one who has spent a fair amount of his time in the tech space over the past decade and as one who spends a fair amount of his time in the Silicon Valley portion of the San Francisco Bay Area, I do not care how many genders Google employees append to their online biographies or how extreme they cut and color their hair, there is simply so little that is deeply creative about the company at this point. It is superficially creative at best.
The zeal of that devotion to superficiality and groupthink feels like a retelling of the Salem Witch Trials. It is conformity and virtue signaling at its worst and most tyrannical, yet it is allowed to masquerade as creativity in polite company. It is no such thing. Soul-sucking conformity is what it is.
Google Remains A Strong Company
This is not to say that the company is about to go under. That is very unlikely. This is not to say that it is a bad investment: it is establishment, in bed with all the right players, quasi-governmental at this point, and in possession of so much proprietary technology. Google is quickly becoming a blue chip stock, in fact, if it is not already.
But the things that made it special have left Google.
And that is natural.
There is nothing to bemoan or pity.
As a company grows, it often gets further away from its founding vision. That is especially true when its founding vision is poorly constructed and its hiring encourages a culture of hubris.
Google Has Lost Touch With What Has Made It So Special
The vision of 1997 was for Google to be the world changing search engines that gives people what they wanted to find on the internet. Whether intentional or not, Google’s vision turned into the amorphous and easy-to-corrupt “Don’t be evil.”
It is so amorphous that it is a hard vision to carry over decades, over hundred of thousands of employees and over trillions of dollars. Some of the purity of a founding vision gets diluted in the volume of that all.
Which is where we find Google.
And it is where we find many of its “competitors.”
Competitor is hardly a fitting term. So many of the search engines simply rely on either Google or Bing to provide the search and then repackage the results.
In the spring of 2020, my team and I did some research on search engines. I understood that censored search engine results were being used to keep the truth from us, so I needed better search engine options that were not dedicated primarily to hiding the truth. Most search engines were then, and still are, taking the wants of their users as a secondary fancy at best.
If you have not had a look at that research report yet, it is research worth having a look at. In the most recent update, I list by name for you 1.) the search engines that suck and are hardly worth using (including Duck Duck Go), and I also list out 2.) the two search engines that are relatively uncensored. I do that right on the first page, so you do not have to go digging to find it. You can access it here (https://realstevo.com/search) or by texting the word TRUTH to the phone number 33777.
We Can All Have A Pity Party Now About Big Tech Censorship
So much talk about Big Tech censorship ends up in a total pity party. And you know what, I can join the pity party. I have lost a small fortune due to my decision to build a business around big tech, effectively making myself an easy target for the censors, a ready victim.
So we can all sit around and whine about how bad each one of us have been treated, which is what usually happens in these conversations. And we can call on government to introduce even more legislation related to Silicon Valley and even more regulation in an effort to improve the industry.
We all know that government wouldn’t have the first clue about how to do that.
Government can’t even get the basic functions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness right.
When they get involved in any of those areas they seem to shorten life, curtail liberty, and to make it harder to pursue happiness. So why would we trust them with even more responsibility?
Where we as a cultural can wind up instead is by resting on our values that have provided so much success: leaving decisions up to individuals.
The Reality Most People Will Choose . . .And That’s Okay
Most people will choose to live censored lives if the easiest, cheapest, quickest search engine is the heavily censored option. Some people will take the extra effort to value better search engines. They might accept inconvenience in exchange for it. They might accept a clunky user interface. They might even accept paying money for the service.
But this is what we can choose to make this about: you get the freedom to decide what is right for you.
AND you are responsible for the consequences of the choices you make.
And What You, Dear Reader, Also Get To Choose
That means, this very day, you can use the technologies mentioned in my report, or any list of other technologies to live more free: with chat options like Signal or Telegram, social media options like Gab or Gettr, news options like LewRockwell.com, Substack, DailyClout.io or a thousand others.
There are literally a thousand other entrepreneurs out there working day and night right now hoping you will use their product to live a more free life.
Do you comprehend how amazing that is?
That does not require an act of Congress, it does not require an executive order, it does not require you to convince an “on-the-spectrum,” vaccine injured, big tech oligarch to do what is nearly impossible for him — recognize your humanity.
No. All it requires is you resolving to live a more free life and then doing the things that ensures that more free life.
This May Be The Most Free and Empowering Era For Thought And Expression That Has Ever Existed
We live in a special era for that: perhaps the freest era of human existence that has ever been. Some people want to convince you otherwise. It is worth wondering why anyone would want to convince you of such.
Here is what I am trying to convince you of: the power to live an amazingly free life is at your reach, if you just reach out and seize it, doggedly refusing to ever let go of your freedom.
You do that and you will know no else.
You choose the other path, and you might as well just give up now. So don’t do that.
Reach out.
Grab freedom.
Live the freest life you can.
Ask no one for permission.
You do that, and you will ripple out freedom to the world around you.
Living life by that example is the most potent freedom fighting anyone can do in any era.
Three Highly Touted Activities That Are False Examples For Winning Freedom & The Seldom Talked About Option That Really Works
It is not going to war and fighting bravely in the trenches that wins your freedom best. That often has the opposite effect.
It is not obedience to society that wins your freedom best. That often has the opposite effect.
It is not handing over freedoms to government who promises to safeguard them that wins your freedom best. That often has the opposite effect.
It is living the most free life you can. And that often can be the most difficult of these options — for it has no proven schematic to follow. That path is unique for each person. Though it is difficult, it is so very effective.
Society calls it “selfish,” “reckless,” “anti-social.”
The truth is the opposite. The truth is that society wants to convince you to buy into those and any number of other lies in order to stop you from living the most free life you can.
Once you live too freely, others might start to get the idea that they, too, can do that, rather than keeping themselves convinced that only VIPs are permitted to live freely. Part of the elimination of the permanent aristocratic class in the New World was the understanding that freedom is open to all who will do what is required to secure it for themselves as individuals. This understanding undergirds many aspects of life in the New World.
So much emphasis is placed into confusing you about that reality. You can choose to refuse to allow confusion to be your guide. How to live life more freely and how to spread freedom most effectively is treated as some kind of well kept secret. It is nothing of the sort. It is in plain sight for all to see. It is clear for all who are willing to recognize the reality. It is a reality that puts all Accountability on the person who recognizes it and which denies that person any excuse. That can be hard for many to accept. Reality is not taking a poll, however, to gauge your feelings. Reality is what it is, regardless of how you feel about how challenging that full accountability may be.
The “Secret” To Living A More Free Life
This, then, is the secret to living a more free life as effectively as possible: just do it. This is the secret to spreading freedom through the world as effectively as possible: just live as freely as you can.
So much else is secondary to that, futile, and largely out of your control.
So the question at hand then is — which will you choose?
In every area of life more is demanded of us. Say no to the nonsense. Push back. Lead. Read the bestselling “Face Masks in One Lesson” (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1953847005?linkCode=ogi&psc=1&th=1&tag=lrc18-20) if you don’t know how. It is about the face masks but also so much more. Read “Face Masks Hurt Kids” (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1953847153/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&linkCode=ogi&psc=1&tag=lrc18-20%29&th=1) if you don’t know why. Signup for the hard hitting daily newsletter at www.RealStevo.com (www.RealStevo.com). Refuse to be enfeebled by the world’s nonsense. You can lead yourself, your family, and the world around you toward better.
