Why Google's Best New Feature Is Evil

By calling such a terrific feature - and SearchWiki is indeed an improvement - a “wiki” feature, Google is pushing us a small step backwards in the upward march towards Internet-savvy civilization. Part of the continuing threat of the Internet is that it requires users to approach it with the correct kind of selective skepticism for it to be useful: “I can trust this site for news, but not necessarily that one.” By lumping the term “wiki” - an unreliable, fallible construct - with a sacrosanct, scientific schema like “search” - a reliable, algorithm-based tool - Google threatens to engender too much trust in “wiki,” where there should instead be a measured, journalistic mistrust. And it's all for naught, because the feature isn't even really a community-based feature, anyway.

There is, of course, tremendous potential to the concept of filtering data using collective human intelligence, but this feature isn't nearly revolutionary enough to warrant such a disruptive title. There's no telling if Google might change the name upon final release, but if it doesn't, let's hope that Google's lack of discretion won't seep into other industries. We don't want our children writing science papers using “statistical opinions” or our medicines based on “chemical inclinations.”