A deleterious world

Imagine being able to check instantly whether or not statements made by politicians were correct. That is the sort of service Google boss Eric Schmidt believes the Internet will offer within five years.

Politicians have yet to appreciate the impact of the online world, which will also affect the outcome of elections, Schmidt said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday.

He predicted that "truth predictor" software would, within five years, "hold politicians to account." People would be able to use programs to check seemingly factual statements against historical data to see to see if they were correct.

"One of my messages to them (politicians) is to think about having every one of your voters online all the time, then inputting 'is this true or false.' We (at Google) are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability," he told the newspaper.

Politicians beware, warns Google


If Google never deletes anything, their servers will begin to take on the proportions of the dark star. Is this a GOOD THING??

Frankly, I'd hope they'd be better at ferreting out the "truth" of much of what comes through the internet to me now. Why wait 5 years?

If Google really is a god, why can't they stop spam? And why does their Gmail program "Grrr" at me for blocking a pop-up window for my contacts when it is THEIR pop-up blocker utility that is doing it?

I'm a huge Google user, and hoped they'd give MS a whack or two, but now I'm feeling I've got to watch my back with them, too.

PS: I've never bought into their stock, notwithstanding the millions of shares their insiders have dumped.