Is Google Legal?

Seriously. Google can’t be legal.

Let’s not even delve too deeply into book archiving hoo hahs or pretty obvious antitrust infringement. The very premise of Google’s fundamental service to us (giving us the ability to search the entire internet)  is only possible through web scraping – which is illegal.

Now, I don’t give two hoots about Google’s illegality. I don’t care if they’re building apps right now to ensure the smoother running of all small drug dealing operations. The thing that interests me, is that nobody else seems to give a hoot either.

Old stuff is killing the new

I recently read a great post over on Asi Sharabi’s blog. Asi wants to avoid one trend in 2010: killing things. He reckons there’s a sick amount of sensationalism surrounding new technologies. He says: “Our response to the overwhelming pace of change made us believe that emerging platforms and technologies will categorically and dramatically kill everything that was before them.”

He’s right you know. I think that new stuff killing the old stuff is nonsense. In fact, I think the opposite is true and far more significant: old stuff kills new stuff all the time.

Designing Ecotopia

I remember having a chat with the orgainisers of Ecotopia a few months ago. The three of us were drinking mint tea and lamenting the state of the sustainability conversation. In particular, we lamented how the conversation is mostly around dystopia and all the stuff that’s bound to happen if we don’t make the change.