What Would Google Do_ - Jeff Jarvis [116]
On its official blog, Google gave advice to students, not about where they should learn but what they should learn. Jonathan Rosenberg, senior VP of product management, blogged that the company is looking for “non-routine problem-solving skills.” His example: The routine way to solve the problem of checking spelling would be use a dictionary. The non-routine way is to watch all the corrections people make as they refine their queries and use that to suggest new spellings for words that aren’t in any dictionary. Rosenberg said Google looks for people with five skills: analytical reasoning (“we start with data; that means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know”); communication skills; willingness to experiment; playing in a team; passion and leadership. “In the real world,” he said, “the tests are all open book, and your success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free market.”
Rosenberg’s best advice for students and universities: “It’s easy to educate for the routine, and hard to educate for the novel.” Google sprung from seeing the novel. Is our educational system preparing students to work for or create Googles? I wonder.
The United States of Google: Geeks rule
What if a Google guy were president? Earlier, I told of witnessing the competing worldviews of Larry Page and Sergey Brin versus that of Al Gore as they tackled environmental and energy crises. Google’s founders saw the world and its problems through their engineers’ eyes. Rather than seeking solutions through regulation and prohibition they relied on invention and investment: shouldn’t do vs. can do. If the geeks take over—and they will—we could enter an era of scientific rationality in government. Other nonpoliticians have improved government. Michael Bloomberg ran New York City as a business. Arnold Schwarzenegger ruled California on the power of personality. A Google guy might just run government as a service to solve problems.
Whether or not they take charge, Google and the internet will have a profound impact on how government is run, on its relationship with us, and on our expectations of it. Now that we have the technological means to open up government and make every action transparent, we must insist on a new ethic of openness. So abolish the Freedom of Information Act and turn it inside out. Why should we have to ask for information from our government? The government should have to ask to keep it from us. Every action of government must be open, searchable, and linkable by default. The information government knows must be online with permanent addresses so we can link to it, discuss it, and download and analyze it. Government needs a new and transparent attitude: Officials and agencies should blog and engage in open conversations with constituents. They should webcast every meeting, since technology now makes that easy. Remember Weinberger’s Corollary to Jarvis’ First Law: There is an inverse relationship between control and trust. The more our leaders trust us with information, the more we will trust them with government. Right now, there’s too little trust in both directions.
I want government to implement tools like MyStarbucksIdea and Dell IdeaStorm to enable citizens to make suggestions and share ideas, discussing them together as communities: GovernmentStorm. The United Kingdom has E-Petitions, a program launched by the prime minister’s office