What if Google ruled the World?

I have ranted before about how wonderfully Google keeps track of my mail, contacts, to-do lists, blogs, calendars, etc.  I have even wished that Google might extend its magic to the parts of my life that are less well taken care of: GCarRepairs perhaps? GPhD? GHangover?

Spanish artist Alejo Malia has taken the liberty of imagining a world where Google's presence has moved from cyber to physical, dominating our streets, and even visible to astronauts in space.

Whether these images are meant to celebrate Google's awesomely-efficient organisational tools for our everyday lives, or creepily ever-growing presence in every aspect of our existence, I'm a fan.

The End is Near

The end of traditional computing that is. Since my disastrous crash I've remained obsessed with getting as much stuff off of hardware and into the "cloud" as possible. For example I got the beta version of Google Chrome so that I can download extensions. The extensions allow me to make Gmail my default mail application, and seamlessly integrate mail collection into my browsing experience. Goodbye email client! One less thing to crash. I also got an extension that opens an Internet Explorer tab in case I ever get to a page that can only be viewed properly in IE. Goodbye Microsoft proprietary programs that are totally unstable and clunky and I hate them!

My dad is wary of my enthusiasm, arguing that the internet is not reliable, and that he needs to be able to access his data and emails offline. Good point, but Google is working on it (and others too I'm sure). With Google Gears (built into Chrome, downloadable for Mozilla and IE, don't know about Safari or Opera), Google automatically synchs my Gmails to my hard drive, and if I'm offline I can interact inside a Chrome window with the saved emails as if nothing was wrong. Of course I can't send or receive email when I'm offline, but I can write messages that are queued on my hard drive and then sent automatically when I reconnect to the web.

I feel like I'm one of those people in the sixties who built underground bomb shelters filled with canned food to protect against the inevitable Russian attack and the end of the world. But seriously, I'm totally going to be ready for the revolution, and it's going to be awesome. Meanwhile I'll sit here with my canned corn and my wireless radio and use up the air in my bunker.