Paradiso, M.Google and the Internet: A mega project nesting within another mega-project” Springer the Netherlands

This chapter discusses the role of the Internet and its main rider “Google” as megaprojects encompassing a global scale, having some universal features and an omnipresence, mediating numerous spheres of everyday life, and possibly exerting deep global impacts with emerging and relevant geopolitical, cultural, and economic implications. The chapter begins with brief discussions of the “meganess” of the Internet followed by itss essence compared to civil engineering megaprojects. In the third section I present its evolution and possible implications for human activities, including those related to information, communications and cognition. I introduce in the forth section, the “Google” case, a major Internet rider, as a megaproject, followed by the fifth section that discusses Google’s nesting within the Internet and theorizing a model of virtual megaproject nesting. The reflexive understanding of Google’s “meganess” is reflected (a) in terms of its nesting, virtually and locally, (b) its roles as a major gatekeeper for digital information; (c) as the principal mediator for communication, (d); its being a most powerful repository of computing power; (e) its constitution the largest storage of localized data; and (f) its being a virtual earth information indexing and mapping tool. All of these initiatives of converge capacities of a mega information and communication system. Also all have geopolitical, political, and cultural significances for the globe. As I discuss below, Google highlights the significance of megaprojects as a new path in the human experience of dwelling in the world, perceiving and having cognition of it, doing business, travelling around it, as well as its building and transformation. The concluding section highlights the significance of Google’s “invisible” cyberspace organization and performances, viz., the culture, the logic, strategies of information and communication organization and practices and what it implies in terms of convergence of corporations, individuals, and places on a global scale, but managed privately.