The Register writer Andrew Orlowski is none too impressed with the "techno-utopian," "sappy," "mound of feel-good styrofoam peanuts" essay on the 'second superpower" by Jim Moore. Orlowski says bloggers like Moore have, in just 42 days, managed an Orwellian word-meaning change from an original coinage by Patrick Tyler in The New York Times. (Where Tyler, to my reading, meant world opinion is the other superpower.) Greenpeace went on to use Tyler's idea, as did Kofi Annan (Reg. Req'd link).
Now here's the important bit. Look what the phrase "Second Superpower" produces on Google now. . . Moore's essay is right there at the top.
. . . Although it took millions of people around the world to compel the Gray Lady to describe the anti-war movement as a "Second Superpower", it took only a handful of webloggers to spin the alternative meaning to manufacture sufficient PageRank? to flood Google with Moore's alternative, neutered definition.
. . . To all intents and purposes, the original meaning has been erased. Obliterated, in just seven weeks.
Orlowski, who seems not to be the Google fan I am, offers a new Googleverb:
The phrase "greenwash" will be familiar to many of you: it's where a spot of judicious marketing paint is applied to something decidedly rotten, transforming it into something that looks as if it's wholesome and radical new, but which is essentially unchanged.
This is the first Googlewash we've encountered. 42 days, too.
What else is coming down the pipe?
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