A blog article by Charles Arthur at the Guardian talks about some interesting similarities between Google+ and the Matrix.

The Matrix has you…This is one of the iconic phrases from the movie “The Matrix”. This phrase may also be used by Google+ as it talks to you. Google+ is more than a social network.

It is an omni-being. The one that knows everything you’re thinking, and which guides what you see and experience.

Here are some of the main points in terms of comparison between Google+ and the Matrix:

Unification of all activities

Ben Thompson, author of the Stratechery blog, has made this point recently. Google+ is about unifying all of Google’s services under a single log-in which can be tracked across the Internet on every site that serves Google ads, uses Google sign-in, or utilizes Google analytics.

Every feature of Google+ – or of YouTube, or Maps, or GMail, or any other service – is a flytrap meant to ensure you are logged in and being logged by Google at all times.

Tracked at all Times

When you log in, Google+ puts a tag on you where all your activities are being tracked and all services integrated to guide you and your activities. Like the matrix, your location and even your tendencies are all set for you.

Google+, just like the Matrix shows what you want to know

When you’re searching for something, or looking on a map, or searching on YouTube, you’ll see what Google has decided are the “most relevant” results (and of course the “most relevant” adverts).

If you frequent climate change denial sites, a search on “climate change” will turn those up ahead of the sites run by rational scientists.

Whatever your leaning, politically, sexually, philosophically, if you let Google+ see it then that will be fed back to you. It’s the classic “filter bubble”.

Anyhow, that’s what Google+ is about. Discussing it as if it were a social network which needs activity in the way that Facebook and Twitter do misses the point.

It really doesn’t matter if you never use it, never fill out your profile, never fill a circle, never get added to anyone’s circle. What matters to Google is that you’re signed in, in order that it can form its matrix of knowledge about you.

While tall this information gathering and resulting personalisation can be really useful, it also makes it harder for us to find an unbiased view of the real world. But then again, do we ever know what is real?

With this, let me end using another phrase in the context of “The Matrix”………Welcome to the Real World.

Read the original article here.