Google, Politics, And The President Of The United States

[Commentary] In Steven Levy's new book 'Inside The Plex', we get a rare first-hand view of Google's flirtation, and eventual disillusionment, with politics as a means to foster social change. To begin with -- Levy explores the social and political roots of the two founders Sergi Brin and Larry Page. Both of them come from an intellectual upbringing and were raised with sense of obligation to create an impact on society. And while technologists often think of politics as the antithesis of reasoned, logic based, objective reasoning--reading The Plex you can see how the Googlers, at least for a time, thought that an Obama Presidency might be in sync with their own view of how knowledge and a connected world could replace local or regional fiefdoms with a data driven, solution oriented world.