Prof. Dr. Massimo Marchiori, University of Padova, Italy, and European Institute for Science, Media, and Democracy (EISMD), Belgium speaking at the Sustainable Destinations Summit 2023 in Mallorca, Spain. “A society in transformation – Learning from history”
Prof. Dr. Massimo Marchiori “A society in transformation – Learning from history.” Prof. Dr. Massimo Marchiori was the driving force behind HyperSearch, the backbone of Google’s work as a search engine, which changed how society searches and uses information in the most drastic way since Gutenberg invented the printing press. How does he see how this affected today's world, and what does he foresee to come?
Interviewer:
Mr. Michael Collins, Founder, Managing Director, TravelMedia.ie
Transcription:
- [Interviewer] So you worked on Hyper Search, you're responsible for Hyper Search from the very early days. And obviously Google is based search rank on that, well page ranking on it. Looking back, you were involved in a very early stage technology, it has now become ubiquitous, we all use it. How do you feel about that? Has it developed the way you thought it would develop? Do you think it is a powerful tool or could it be better? Could it be different?
- It's a great, powerful tool and thank you because it's a question that touches everybody here. It's also an instructive process that's been going on. There's been the same interface in Google since 40 years, when it started, the classic search bar, the Oracle way. So you type in the Oracle and you hope that the Oracle will give you the mighty answer, right? So yes, it's great, but it stayed the same. And it's like Jurassic Park, if you think about something from 40 years in technology. So it's so, you know, strange apparently but it's not so strange if you factor in the people. Because Google and all the other major company, Facebook too, Twitter also some extent, all of the others they try to change, but they have this big problem that change is costly for the people, not for the technology. It's easy to change technology, for people, you know we are not built to change. It's nobody's fault. We're not built to change because it's energy consumption. We don't want to do efforts. We are built to be lazy, but for a reason. You know, our ancestors, you know were surviving because they were lazy, you know, they were accumulating energy. Because today I'm eating, tomorrow I don't know if I'm eating, okay? So it is part of us, and this is the big problem that we have inherited from our ancestor, we're fundamentally lazy people, you know, and we we don't like to change. And it's the same in normal life, and it's also the same in technology. So that's the big problem that companies in general, every kind company has to face, you know to push people to try at least for a change.
