The mayor of Topeka, Kansas has anounced that he will rename the city to "
Google" for a month. The mayor of Topeka has renamed his city to Google in order to entice the company to test out their new internet connection that operates at 1 Gigabite a second. This is a very
interesting step to take as a city. I want to point out how the power dynamic has changed in our society if a town has renamed itself in order to entice a giant corporation to test its new internet program in their city. It seems that this is either the most lobbied and corrupt city in the world or the consumer has gone to extreme lengths to have a taste of a product. Unfortunately, it looks like the latter is true in this case. Usually it is the case that large corporations play fetch with cities and government entities in order to be able to sell and market their products to the people. It is alarming that we have become so accepting of corporations as a pet dog is to his master. (Picture found
here) The reason this is alarming is because corporations are designed to create profits and not always look out for the peoples best interest. With this mindset a corporation would not care if it hurt someone if the profit margin was satisfying. Because of this, I think we should be careful to how much power we give corporations over our lifestyles.
Ok, enough rabble rabble. What is actually going on in Topeka? Well google has a broadband connection that has the ability to send information at the speed of 1 Gigabit a second. Is that a lot? Well according to
this guy the average speed of broadband in america is 3.9 Megabits a second.
One Gigabit is 1024 Megabit. So this connection speed will be 256 times faster than the average broadband speed. Woah.
Maybe Google, Kansas doesnt sound that bad if you put it that way. Just kidding.
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