The United States of Google?

Imagine Google as the polling place that never closes, except now we—and not the pollsters—control the questions and our opinions

By Jeff Jarvis

What if a Google Guy were President?

Barack Obama may be the closest thing ever in the White House. The President is making weekly Web videos, his staff uses Twitter, and the White House has started a blog for daily developments. This may be just the start. On its Web site, the White House is promising more communication, transparency, and participation. If it can deliver on those promises, the Administration could make government more Google-y at least in terms of openness and collaboration.

But I wonder whether the Google (GOOG) worldview could bring more profound change to government. If the geeks take over the world—and they will—we could enter an era of scientific rationality in Washington. Other nonpoliticians have improved government. Michael Bloomberg runs New York City as a business. Arnold Schwarzenegger rules California with the power of personality. A Google guy might just run government as a service to solve problems.

I think I saw a preview of government under geeks at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin talked about their efforts to create cheap, clean energy through the company's foundation, Google.org. After hearing former Vice-President Al Gore talk about his prescriptions for energy and the ecology—carbon taxes, regulation, prohibition—I went up the mountain to get the Google view.

If Google Were a Country

The contrast was stark. To summarize if not oversimplify their vantage points: Where Gore demands taxes and regulation, the Google team proposes invention and investment. Gore & Co. want to raise the cost of carbon—the cost of polluting—whereas the Google team wants to lower the cost of energy, producing clean electricity for less than the cost of power generated with coal. RE

Still, we see different worldviews at work. "You can't succeed just out of conservation because then you won't have economic development," Google.org head Larry Brilliant said. "Find a way to make electricity—not to cut back on it but to have more of it than you ever dreamed of." More power than you ever dreamed of. Create and manage abundance rather than control scarcity—as ever, that is the Google approach. Whereas Gore talks about what we shouldn't do, Google talks about what we can do. There, we see the contrast between the politician's brain and the engineer's. Google people start with a problem and look for a solution. They identify a need, find an opportunity, and then systemically, logically, and aggressively attack it with innovation.

In power or not, 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. I say we should abolish the Freedom of Information Act so we can 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.