In 2011, in a bid against Apple, Microsoft, and others for a cache of Nortel ’ s patents, Google offered what at first seemed like weird, arbitrary sums. It was soon apparent that these were not random, but represented definite and significant mathematical strings — for example, Google bid \$3.14159 billion, or pi times a billion, for one bundle. It had bid numbers that were Brun ’ s constant and the Meissel-Mertens constant, which relate to prime numbers. One can interpret this as an oblique but emphatic symbolic statement by Google that the immutable and universal laws of mathematics, which are by their nature uninterested in the folly of political hierarchies and economic intrigue, will ultimately win out over the hysterical mere numbers of human counting. Google may or may not share this view, of course, but none of the other platforms discussed in this chapter come close to Google in its universal, even cosmic ambition. Not only does the company express a cosmopolitan mission (at least rhetorically), it does so as if the company itself were merely the conduit of a deeper force of quantitative reason. The company ’ s mission statement, “ to organize the world ’ s information and make it universally accessible and useful, ” is in its simplicity about as all-encompassing as you can get. When everything is information, then organizing the information means organizing everything. For example, Google recently purchased the smart thermostat company Nest (as part of a robotics buying spree), and the company still has its license to sell energy. In the longer term, a Google Energy may be a key player in the retail and wholesaling of renewables and the management of both consumer and municipalityfacing smart grids. The company sees the pairing of bits and electrons as part of its vocation in ways that others simply cannot: Google Energy, Google Glass, Google Ideas, Google Car, Google Robotics, Google Earth. Google Space. Google Time. Google AI. Google Grossraum. Google Sovereignty, Google World. For the Google platform model for the Cloud Polis, these are all based on a grand vision encompassing (at least) information cosmopolitanism, search, advertising, physicalized information, and global infrastructure.
Google (and now Alphabet) is a company founded on an algorithm. <sup>62</sup> The original PageRank algorithm was Larry Page ’ s attempt to organize the entire World Wide Web according to something like the peer citation models that quantify which academic papers are most influential and relevant. This computational meritocracy is in the service of a universalist mission to not only organize the world ’ s information but to “ make it accessible and useful. ” The most current status report on this mission as a geopolitical framework is the book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and former State Department official, now Google Ideas director, Jared Cohen. The book pledges allegiance to various contemporary truisms regarding the Internet ’ s ability to flatten and democratize political systems and to deliver market-friendly civil societies. It argues that open data flows puncture local superstitions and will eventually sink capricious authoritarian ideologies under the weight of the transparency and enlightenment that they usher in. Partially reminiscent of the Wilsonian doctrines that drew Schmitt ’ s disdain, and also of Clintonian versions of the end-of-history thesis, for Schmidt and Cohen, friction is equated with antiquated self-serving oppression whereas universal information liquidity is linked with geocultural progress and democracy. Their characterization of Google ’ s role as neutral platform is often more implied than directly outlined, and visionary claims for the digital future are made through and on behalf of the regular people whose lives will be enhanced by the Google platform ’ s evolution. Today, however, Google is also perceived as too linked to the US federal system, and both fairly and unfairly is held in suspicion throughout the world, especially in China and Russia, as a stalking horse for the US State and Defense departments ’ security apparatuses. <sup>63</sup> Any real informational cosmopolitanism is far less likely to come to fruition in any way resembling Google ’ s stated aspirations as long as this is the case. In his slashing review of the book, Julian Assange characterizes it as “ an attempt by Google to position itself as America ’ s geopolitical visionary — the one company that can answer the question, ‘ Where should America go? ’ ” While his cynicism about the chrysalis Google World on tap and what it means for a company hoping to not “ be evil ” is shared by many, Assange ’ s laser focus on the US-centricity of Google overstates the particular. <sup>64</sup> Put plainly, Assange ’ s single-mindedness about the United States as the epicenter of hegemony and therefore the key innovator of authoritarian models (an assertion he had no qualms making from own show on Putin ’ s RT television channel) is too idiosyncratic and limited a critique. It is informed by an absolutized (and Oedipalized) metapolitics that crusades for transparency, opacity, and/or privacy as the guarantors of safety and sovereignty for atomized rational actors, and too often also as the core or even sole requirements for human social organization. For Assange, Google equates with sinister schemes of a single state, and according to Schmidt and Cohen ’ s book, Google is but a useful and agnostic enabler of the democratic project. What neither Assange nor Google is able to say is that the more disruptive and even likely future is one in which platforms such as Google undermine the ability of traditional states to control the evolution of the new Cloud polities, irregular and unrecognizable, that spring to life and will in time turn on their state hosts.
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