Sunday, October 2, 2011

Homogenized Blogging: Why Google Scribe scares me

While updating this blog earlier, I noticed a promotion announcing the launch of Google Scribe. The announcement asked "Do you ever find yourself writing slowly, staring at a blinking cursor or looking for words to express yourself?"

Well, yes. 

For most of us, that's what writing is all about--the careful selection of words and the thoughtful assembly of those words into sentences, paragraphs, whole narratives. 

Apparently the folks at Google Labs believe such endeavors to be a problem worthy of a solution. So Google Scribe promises to offer text suggestions and an auto-complete feature--all to help us write "more efficiently."

I don't know about you, but when I'm writing, I'm striving for eloquence, rather than efficiency. My goal is to say things in a way that could only come from me--not a lab. I'll go out on a limb and posit that hearing the voice of the individual is the reason that I--or any of us--read and follow blogs in the first place.

 If every blogger were to embrace Google Scribe, we might as well simply create one über-blog and take turns posting. 

Who wants to go first?