Google's foreign policy
WBPickett
Did Google do the right thing in pulling out of China? What should be
the U.S. government's role in facilitating the spread of technologies
that restrict or expand freedom of expression? This article raises
some important questions and reveals that the U.S. is far from
coherent and consistent in its policies. Professor Mel Kranzberg of
Georgia Tech, the Founder of the Society for the History of Technology
(who spoke at Rose-Hulman in the late 1970s), once said that
"technology is neither bad nor good, nor is it neutral." Surely,
government policy has a role in guiding this technology, as it has
before for this as well as numerous other technologies, for good
rather than, as Google would say, for evil. Now all we need to do is
define "good" and the policy best suited for it.