Without sites like Google, Amazon, Yahoo and the like, I would be indefinitely lost while surfing the internet. Whether I’m on the internet to find information about something specific such as the spelling of the word Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian, or if I’m on just to look at cute pictures of puppies, I immediately go to Google, which happens to be set as my home page. You could probably say that after many many years of technological advances, Google is the new ‘breadcrumbs’, as mentioned and described by Morville on page 22 in his book “Ambient Findability” (https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webct/urw/tp0.lc5116001/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct). But, as Morville mentioned, bread crumbs were not sufficient for Hansel and Gretel as the birds swooped down and ate them. But whether we are talking about bread crumbs or more commonly used, however outdated, forms of wayfaring, nothing has proven more efficient for wayfaring than the internet, and nothing on the internet has proven more efficient in wayfaring than Google. This is part of the attitude described in Parry’s introduction to “Living Books About Life”.
“While Bartlow’s rhetoric was admittedly ‘grandiose,’ his central claim, that the internet was a place of freedom separate from the limits of the physical world, reflected the utopic atmosphere of the time. The technological revolution, in particular the rise of the digital network, seemed to point to a future ‘where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity’ (Bartlow, 1996).”
People were excited; everything was new, efficient, unique: internet being described as a ‘utopia’. Although internet was and still is all these things, nothing, it seems, can come without a price.
The plus side to Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs was that, if they birds hadn’t eaten them, they would have eventually dissolved into the dirt, without a trace of who left them there, when, or why. The same goes with other ways of early wayfaring as described by Morville, such as making marks on trees or using our five senses. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Google doesn’t let you leave an untraceable path like bread crumbs do. There are pros and cons to the data mining, as described in Parry’s introduction cited earlier, and other such tactics as allowed by Google to gain information. The cons obviously being security breaches and probably some discomfort. The pros, however, is more personalized and relevant advertising for each individual user. These are only brief examples of the arguments for both sides, but the fact of the matter is that despite what you think, the internet is a tool, not only for consumers, but also for businesses. It may be the first form of wayfaring that benefits multiple people at one time, internet search engines are the first for a lot of things. And so rather than seeing it is a utopia, it should be viewed more as a compromise of sorts, an exchange; the consumer gets access to the most effective and efficient form of wayfaring, and the producer gets the information they want from that consumer.
