Google and the Internet: A Mega-Project Nesting Within Another Mega-Project

The chapter begins with a brief discussion of the “meganess” of the Internet. We will then introduce the “Google” case as a major Internet rider, impressively nesting within it, followed by a reflexive understanding of its “meganess” namely in terms of its roles as a major gatekeeper for digital information; as the principal mediator for communication; its being a most powerful repository of computing power; its constituting the largest storage of localized data; its being a virtual earth information indexing and mapping tool, and, in the human experience of living in the world, a new way of having cognition of it, as well as of its cultural reproduction. What we need is to give visibility to the “invisible” of this megaproject and what it can imply in terms of the convergence of corporations, individuals, and places on a global scale, but managed privately.