What Would Google Do_ - Jeff Jarvis [120]
I would like to see an open marketplace of legal representation—present your problem and take bids from lawyers who have handled similar cases, with data on their success rates. Legal representation can also be open-sourced. People who’ve been in cases can offer free advice and aid to others: Here’s how I dealt with my landlord and here are all the documents I used; feel free to copy and adapt them.
The goal is to free the law—our law—from the private stranglehold of the legal priesthood. Between putting laws and cases online and making them searchable, creating simplified legal documents anyone can use, holding weapons to fight legal intimidation, and creating a more transparent marketplace, we would not replace the legal profession with all its faults but we could create checks on its power.
Even the Supreme Court could benefit from a little Googlification. After the Court’s esteemed justices made two mistakes in two decisions one day in 2008—one in a case involving the death penalty and child rape, the other involving energy regulation—they were corrected by bloggers who would have been happy to do so before the decisions, if only they’d been given the chance. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
What other industries are immune from Googlethink? VC Fred Wilson said construction, because it’s so laden with atoms. Yes, but architecture is opening up—I’ve seen more than one effort to open-source both the creation and use of designs. We can also share ways to fix up our homes. Waste disposal? Atoms again, but I’ll bet that we, the customers, will start using online soapboxes to gang up on manufacturers and force them to reduce their obscene packaging. Furniture? There’s a blog called Ikeahacker that enables fans to share ideas for modifying the slavishly standardized Swedish products. Mining? The book Wikinomics delights in telling the story of a mining company that opened up its geologic data to enable the public to help it find deposits and to get a share of the wealth that resulted. Pornographers? Of course, they have been the pioneers in most every innovation in online media and the industry benefited from each move—until amateur porn came along on PornTube (the not-safe-for-work YouTube) to undercut the business benefits of scarcity. The military? Actually, it was among the earliest users of blogs and wikis because it wants troops to share their experience and what they know. Terrorists? Unfortunately, they have made all-too-effective use of the internet and SEO to spread poison and create networks. No, few are immune from Google’s impact.
God and Apple: Beyond Google?
OK, then, what about God? Is he immune from Googlethink? Churches have used the internet to spread their word and create virtual congregations that meet online or through Meetup. There are religious versions of many of the internet’s big sites—such as GodTube, holier than YouTube—and religious groups have made clever use of others: God is big on MySpace and Facebook. Bible and Koran verses are searchable not only on the web but even on the iPhone. It’s hard to imagine God endorsing a wiki version of the Bible—but then, wasn’t the Talmud the world’s first wiki? There are even web 2.0 religious movements. Open-Source Judaism—inspired by Douglas Rushkoff’s 2003 book Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism—has created the Open-Source Haggadah (a prayer book). God is not immune from the power and influence of Google.
Is there any entity that is untouched? Is there an anti-Google, one institution that has become successful by violating the rules in this book? I could think of one: Apple.