In The Age of Platforms, the author begins by talking about what it means to go “off the grid.” 30 years ago, if people had heard about how much effort it would take to become as disconnected we were in 1986, I think they would have been shocked. Even just in the last 10 years, the interconnected nature of our lives has evolved exponentially with the advent of social networks, smartphones, and widespread wireless broadband internet. Especially in the lives of students and those involved in careers focused on technology, we are required by our social circles, jobs, and education to be on the internet, alive and active.

It amazes me how quickly this became the norm, how quickly it jumped from a world in which I went outside to play with other kids on the block to one in which increasingly younger children spend a majority of their time on a screen. Today, the average American holds in their hand Facebook, Twitter, a web browser, all the music they could imagine, and the ability to share their thoughts and feelings with anyone they desire (and many that they do not intend to). The Age of Platforms attributes the success of these platforms to their interconnectedness. Facebook is not just a way to keep in touch with friends. It is now a source of news for many. It is now a way to find recipes. It is now a simple web browser. It is now a game center. It is now a nervous tick for most people I know. Bored? Slip your phone out of your pocket and scroll indefinitely.

The same of Facebook could be said of many of the major tech companies today. Google holds nearly all services of the modern age. Email, education, Youtube, browsers, and all your personal information are now the domain of Google. This ubiquity of an entity is truly unheard of before today. Never before has something offered such a litany of services to nearly anyone.

Why are these platforms so widely accepted and used? Why are they not questioned or considered before their use? Likely because of the new type of business plan introduced by these platforms. These services are all free. People do not pay for Facebook or Gmail or Youtube (in most cases). Instead, these companies reap their massive revenue from advertisements linked integrally into their platforms. Facebook, between things you may or may not care about, includes a “sponsored post” or a “suggested post,” a fancy word for ads tailored specifically to you. These platforms use this information that people voluntarily, willingly, and sometimes unknowingly give away to create an experience made custom by advanced algorithms specifically for the customer. This strategy is not unique to only a few services. Free to Play games, sponsored content on websites, and suggested products litter out online experience these days, and it is working extremely well. This is likely not to leave us anytime soon.

Although Google and Facebook may not live forever, their business plan likely will. In an upward trend with no sign of slowing down, information is the newest commodity, and is given away by most without a second thought. If this happened in 10 or 20 years, what will the world look like 10 or 20 years from now? 30? 40? 100? It is frightening to consider how the world might change within our lifetime.

Google is truly an all powerful company, unrivaled in its size and scope. Never before has there been a conglomerate with such power over the general populace. Not only does Google supply the world with communication, storage, password protection, internet browsing, and countless other services, but they collect the information of nearly all of their users and sell it to third parties, yet people today are not only generally unconcerned, but they wholeheartedly desire their searches saved and their preferences available to the system at any given time. Many people relish in the fact that your keyboard knows what word you want to type next, or that you never have to type in a full URL anymore, or that you can just save all your passwords to your computer and have it auto fill all your sensitive information, even your credit card.

Recently, Google has been partnering with schools both K-12 and secondary schools to offer their services to school systems. These are called Apps For Education and include a suite of services including Gmail, Vault, Drive, and many others. It is hard to argue that these apps don’t increase productivity between students. Umass has already seen the difference Gmail and Drive can make for both team based projects and individual assignments. It makes it easy with one secure login to access and edit any of your files on any university computer, of which there is a plethora. These services combine very well with a lot of Umass’s recent renovations like the sea of library computers, the computer-equipped classrooms filling the ILC and more buildings to come, the Digital Media Lab, and many others. Umass and Google have truly created a nearly seamless productivity environment here (aside from the Wi-Fi).

Google states that its intentions stem from its beginning at Stanford University. They say that their goal is to enter the educational community and keep those with a desire to learn up to date on the latest technology and information. They imply that their thought is for the good of students, and therefore, the good of the growing world at large. However, some recent news stories and Google’s practices outside of their interactions with schools tell a slightly different story. Google, although it claims not to track students’ data, has been found to collect information on the very students it is saying it is trying to protect. A few stories has shown this to be happening in K-12 schools, but I would not be at all surprised if Google has been tracking all of my web traffic, including the information sent through eduroam and my Umass/Google account.

Google’s presence at Umass is definitely a big one. I can’t remember the last time I did a project without a team using the phrase “put it on the drive” or “make a shared folder.” In less than 3 years, Google has become an intrinsic part of campus and synonymous with team work and productivity.

It seems that in our increasingly fast paced world, images are the predominant source of information and entertainment in this current day and age. The move towards more immersive media is a trend that has been very apparent over the past several decades, and especially in the past 9 or so years. This is not to say that many people push for more traditional media and traditionally inspired new media. Podcasts, a new form of radio, really, have become quite popular lately, especially within the crowd of people less interested in immersive media, and more interested in story telling, and a personal experience.

The move away from radio to television began early on, much before I was born. Television, in its honeymoon phase of the American public, represented the newest and hottest way to get information. Many news and radio broadcasting stations moved to the television to keep viewers interested in their station. However, radio continued to be an important part of the way of life. Today, there is a push for media that engulfs the viewer beyond most people’s wildest dreams, VR is here to stay it seems. It’s only in the very beginning stages in the consumer market, but I believe it will soon be a cornerstone for entertainment and social networking, likely within the next 15 years. With this new media, and our constant interaction with videos and pictures, podcasts have become popular with people in a different kind of counter culture. They have computers or smartphones to hear the podcast, but like to be able to just hear the information. This lends the ability to multitask more, as I can drive and listen to a podcast on my way to work, but it would be next to impossible to watch a new episode of Bob’s Burgers while operating a car, let alone extremely dangerous.

Most of the people that listen to podcasts are of an older crowd; you would be hard pressed to find a toddler looking for their next fix of Serial. Instead, you see children trying new games, bragging about new apps, and watching their latest, greatest, YouTube subscriber. An interesting question to ask is this: is this because their is simply no podcaster looking to entertain children, or is there just no demand? Would children be less likely to shoo off media like podcasts in favor of more immersive media if they were taught at a younger age to listen to podcasts and radio, to be able to be interested in single-sensory media? Would our kids be less bored overall? Or is simple media doomed because of more experience based media like VR?

I believe podcasts are here to stay for at least a little longer, but more importantly, it is what they represent that we should be considering. Podcasts, in their way, are a symbol for acceptance of new technology, but a striving to use it in a traditional manner: instead of expanding what we can experience, making it easier to use and experience what we are already doing. If not for Podcasts, radio could have gone dead, the art of verbal storytelling could die, and our ability to listen well to other’s words could diminish. I am a big proponent of not just podcasts, but any sort of medium that uses new technology to simply expedite current processes, instead of creating brand new ones.

Google, in its ten or so years of life, has expanded in ways no one could have predicted. Once a simple search engine, Google is now one of the leading controllers of the world’s personal and public information. Most email is run through Google. Most search queries are done through Google. Most mobile data is used by Google. Google Chrome is the browser of choice for most average users. All this was done with the help of the people, as they trusted Google more and more with their contacts, pictures, emails, school information, browser histories and more.

In an age where people sign contracts that they don’t read on a daily basis, companies that control most of our information should at the very least unnerve the average consumer. However, people see this amalgamation of informational media and tailored experiences, the Googlization, as a positive thing. Even if they see it as a frightening and horrifying concept, one that will shape our future in the worst of ways, they still hang on the next update for their Galaxy S6, like myself. When I think of Google, the first thing that comes to mind is how all powerful it is, how much control they have over our lives. Soon after that thought however, I reach into my pocket, remove my android phone, and give Google some more sensitive personal information. It seems the more worried I become about Google’s role in the all-too-scary future, the more helpful and expedient they become. Activists today rally around important concepts like continuing civil rights, fighting for those in less fortunate situations, and making government into its most helpful form. While this takes place, though, a silent war is won without competition. Google is the web that allows these fights to continue. The social networks that make up these civil liberty activities are the hand that feeds, and few question what that hand has in mind for the people.  Even the most vengeful of those that perpetrate crimes on the people today dismiss the threat of Google and Big Data as a whole on our livelihoods.

Google has everything to gain from this. They coerce us into buying from them, they direct us to sites they want us to see, they have us sign agreements promising them our personal information to be distributed to their choice of third parties. All the while, they retain their public image as the helpful, do-good company with dreamy offices and limitless storage. But it comes with a price: Google is gaining our trust. What will it do with all that immense information, while those who gave up that information did it willingly and voluntarily? How far will Google go with our information and unconditional trust? What atrocities could Google commit and have its public image be left unscathed? These are questions that I imagine we will have answers to within a decade. Google is changing at an exponential rate. What service will Google offer next? How easy can they make our lives before people decide that the trade-off is too much? The ultimate question that decides the outcome of all the others is this: how much are we willing to give Google?