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Last Thursday I had the opportunity to hear Craig Silverstein speak on the campus of UNC-CH.  For those who don’t know, here is currently the Technology Director at Google and was the first employee hired by Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.  The lecture was sponsored by UNC’s Health Sciences Library and was framed around Google’s mission statement to organize the world’s information, make it universally accessible and useful to everyone.  Craig basically talked about products that fulfilled this function throughout the lecture.  The purpose of this article is not to regurgitate the lecture, but to review some thoughts provoked by the lecture.  The presentation was video taped, so I’m sure it won’t be too long before it shows up on YouTube or GoogleVideo somewhere anyway.

For the ease of the reader I will format thoughts in bullet format.

• Before the lecture even began it became apparent to me that despite many people’s superficial aversion to Google on campus there is a large following for Google which most definitely includes librarians and academics.  The 650 person auditorium was packed and there was another 150 person overflow room that was full as well.  That is a lot of people for a lecture that extends beyond business hours.
• Before Craig actually began his lecture there was a discussion about librarians and the role they will play in the future.  I thought it was interesting to highlight the changes in the way librarians help people with the advent of the internet.  Where people previously went to the library for help and information they now often submit requests online and librarians themselves are increasingly turning to the internet for answers to the questions they are receiving.
• The definite highlight of the presentation occurred when Craig started his presentation and couldn’t get it to advance to the next screen.  He said “Technology, it’s tricky.”  How ironic.
• Craig gave an interesting statistic about half way though the lecture.  He said that the topics most commonly searched for are health related.  Perhaps I am a bit more cynical, but I have thought for some time that the most common topics were probably more sexual than anything else.  It is good to hear that the internet is actually being used for good too.
• At the end of the talk there was a panel that asked questions.  I found two of those questions very thought provoking.  The first was a question about the privacy of individuals and protecting that privacy.  I thought that Craig did a very good job of addressing this question.  First off he assured the audience that Google took the privacy of individuals VERY seriously.  He alluded to the lapse in judgment by some of their competitors (AOL) and pointed out that Google asks for as little information as possible when users are signing up.  There is no need to give out addresses or phone numbers or any of that other stuff.  On a personal note, and I know some people may disagree with this, but I almost feel like because Google has more money and people to devote to security they are a more secure than even perhaps large educational institutions that are constantly trying to keep up with the newest advances in security and never have enough money to do so.  Granted, Google is a larger target, and that has to be taken into account, but an institution of 100,000 people is a pretty big target too.
• The second point was brought up by Fred Stutzman.  He pointed out the generational gap that is widening between incoming students and those teaching the classes.  Students are growing up in a society where the internet is part of every day life and has been their entire lives, whereas professors are often not part of that, and even more importantly, don’t understand how that affects their students in every aspect of their lives.  His question to Craig was basically how do we bridge this gap?  If I recall correctly, Craig didn’t really have an answer to this, but it got me thinking.  I realize this thought is probably not original by any means, but it brought it home for me in this context.  We really need classrooms where the internet becomes part of the classroom.  There is so much information out there, yet it is often passed over for more traditional textbooks and lectures.  I dare wager that 90-95% of the information we teach in classrooms is presented on the internet in one form or another… the problem is just finding it.  Imagine that College Algebra class you took as an undergrad where the teacher, try as they might, could not explain a certain concept or theory to you in a way that you could understand.  Now imagine you had your laptop there in the classroom and looked up the theory online.  You could see someone else’s explanation of it… perhaps a diagram or two, and dozens, maybe even hundreds of examples.  That is the power of the internet.  That is a power that almost every freshman coming onto a college campus understands.  The question is, how do we get professors to understand the potential of this great resource?  What do y’all think?