Plato at the Googleplex Read online

  And you should have seen his face when he said that, Rhonda. This was the first inkling I got that there was a lot going on behind his façade. He’s a restrained kind of person—very, I don’t know, formal.

  And it’s true that every time Cheryl spoke Plato’s words she took on a formality, speaking slowly and precisely, as if every word had been carefully considered. She’s a natural-born actress who just automatically slips into impersonations.

  In fact, the longer the conversation went on, she continued, the more I could see glimmers of genuine human feeling going on behind his marble façade. I could tell from the tightening of his jaw and from the way his voice, which is very soft to begin with,5 went even softer, how traumatic this whole business with his friend Socrates must have been for him.

  So I asked him: How long ago did this happen to your friend?

  Oh, it’s ancient history, he said. I was a young man, not yet out of my twenties.

  That’s interesting, I said, breaking into Cheryl’s narrative, which she doesn’t exactly encourage. It’s rare for a man to care so much for a friend, I said. Are you sure that Socrates was just a friend and not something, you know, more?

  Well, of course the thought occurred to me, too, Cheryl said. But you don’t just come out and ask someone about that, especially not someone like Plato. You know, my trick to getting my authors to tell me so much? It’s asking the question just to the side of the one that I really want to ask. So I just said, what a terrible story. Didn’t he have a good lawyer?

  Lawyers, said Plato and smiled. I have heard of such people.

  Well, of course you have, I said to him, again wondering if this was an example of some kind of humor, you know a lawyer joke, especially since he said it with a slight smile. He has a pretty stiff face, with very strong bone structure, kind of broad around the forehead, and he doesn’t make any sudden motions, facial or otherwise. You can see what a powerful physique he must have had when he was younger, and he still holds himself ramrod straight.6

  We have no such people in Athens, Plato said. Accusers accuse and defendants defend. Everybody acts as his own lawyer. Those who can afford to usually hire a logographer to write their speeches.

  No lawyers, I interrupted Cheryl. He’s got to be putting you on. Whoever heard of Greece having no lawyers?

  No, that’s what I meant about Greece being so unbelievably different, Rhonda. It’s kind of mind-boggling.

  Are you sure this Plato isn’t one of your fiction writers? I asked her.

  Well, if he is, he’s more convincing than any of them. I’ll never hear the word “gravitas” again without thinking of him. This guy is like hewn from gravitas. The procedure in our city, he said, is that if you are found guilty you get to propose the penalty that you think would be fair. Then the accusers pose another penalty, harsher of course, and then the jury votes on the penalty, often aiming for the mean. This procedure worked to Socrates’ detriment. My friend was famous for his irony, and he was not inclined to abandon it, not even with his life hanging in the balance. I should say especially when his life hung in the balance, since to cower before death, showing a readiness to do anything, throw overboard any principle, in order to stave off death just a few moments longer—for it is only a few moments from the standpoint of eternity—is unmanly.

  That’s an interesting perspective you’ve got there on death, I told him, but just one helpful hint. I’d avoid the use of adjectives like “unmanly.” They can come off sounding sexist, as if you think maybe men are superior to women.

  How’d he take that? I asked Cheryl.

  Surprisingly well, Cheryl said, especially for someone so old-school. He thanked me for my advice, promising that he’d try to remember to avoid sexist words in the future. I have not failed to notice, he said, how differently women are regarded in your society compared to mine. It had always struck me as an unreasonable waste of human resources to keep talented women secluded in their homes, which is what our practice is.7 Yours is a much more rational way of utilizing human potential. So let me amend my last statement and say rather that Socrates held it to be ignoble for a person to undertake an action with the only aim of postponing death, especially since the proposition that death is an evil turns out to be non-trivial to justify.8 During his sentencing, Socrates made a point of mentioning Achilles,9 who is considered throughout Greece to have been the greatest legendary hero. Achilles had been given the choice of either a brief but glorious life or a prolonged but less exceptional life. Of course, Achilles made the heroic choice, and so did Socrates, though I should mention that my friend had already reached his seventieth year, so the option of a short life was foreclosed.10 Nevertheless, he would not succumb to the indignity of acting only to eschew imminent death, especially when doing so required violation of the principles on which he had lived out his life. So when asked to propose a penalty that would accurately reflect his culpability Socrates responded that since he had performed an invaluable service to his city, trying to wake its citizenry from its sleep of complacency, and had never asked for any recompense for his services, the city, if it truly wished to show justice toward him, should vote him free meals for life at the Prytaneum. That was the penalty he proposed after he’d already been voted guilty of a capital offense (Apology 36c–d).

  That’s some chutzpah your friend had there, I said to him.

  Chutzpah? he asked me. This word I do not know.

  Audacity, I explained. I was going to say “balls,” but the word froze on my lips given that hunk of graven gravitas I already mentioned.

  So how did that work out for your friend? I asked him.

  Not so well, he answered, looking down at his folded hands. The jurors were so outraged at Socrates’ chutzpah—he pronounced it perfectly, Rhonda—that more people voted for him to be executed than had voted for a verdict of guilty in the first place. A perfect display of Athenian irrationality and its cultish valorization of the crowd. It would have been funny had it not been so tragic.

  What a sad story, I said, and really, judging from his expression you’d have thought his friend’s death had happened just yesterday. I could almost see the emotions bleeding through the marble. I can see how it still really affects you, I said to him. Your whole demeanor changes when you talk about him. You might think about talking about him more. Audiences will eat it up. Of course, I was trying to buck him up, since he had to go on in less than an hour. And I’ve heard from so many of my authors that the one consolation for the bad episodes they’ve lived through is that they can always use them in their writing.

  He was the best man of his time, he responded (Seventh Letter 324e).

  Do you write about your special relationship with him in your book? I asked him.

  I’ve written about him in many of my writings, he said.

  But about how you feel about him, the effect he had on you?

  No, he answered, I’ve never written specifically about that.

  Well, you should, I told him. You’d have a best seller right there. Tuesdays with Morrie meets Dead Man Walking.

  He just looked at me and smiled, and I had the sense that he had no idea what I was talking about. It wasn’t just a matter of his being Greek, Rhonda, but of his being a foreigner in a weirder way, which became increasingly clear as the day wore on. He’s the first philosopher I’ve ever escorted. I mean the first professional philosopher. I’ve had guys like William Bennett and Dinesh D’Souza. And then that time when I had Bono.

  Anyway, all this time we had been wandering around, gathering food from the different stations, with me urging Plato to try a little of this and a little of that. He was being very finicky, like one of those kids who don’t want to try anything new—my Jason was like that and it drove me crazy. I was thinking of Jason while I urged Plato to try the sushi and he looked at it like it was boiled cockroaches or pie à la mud, which is what I used to say to Jason. They have these long communal tables at the café, kind of the way it was in elementary sch
ool, which is probably no accident since most of these Googlers are barely out of elementary school, still running around with their backpacks and T-shirts and jeans and bringing home fat paychecks to splurge on their toys. I spotted a fairly empty table and shepherded him over, spreading my bag and scarf and sweater around to discourage nudniks. I explained to him that we didn’t have all that much time because a delegation was going to be arriving in about forty minutes to give him a tour of the Googleplex, which I told him I could get him out of if he wanted.

  Why should I want to forgo seeing the Googleplex? he asked.

  Well, you know, I answered, trying to be as delicate as possible, I was just thinking that this is a pretty demanding book tour. What are you doing, like twelve cities in three weeks? You’re in great shape, don’t get me wrong, I know how you Greeks love to work out and all, but still, you have a pretty hectic schedule ahead of you, just for today. They put you in their largest room here, which means they’re expecting a crowd, so I’d like to keep you perky for that. And then there’s the book signing afterward, which is the point of this whole thing and let’s hope your signing hand will get a good workout. I think maybe you should rest a little instead of taking the Google tour. I’m sure they have nap rooms here, since they have every other sort of creature comfort. Including, Rhonda, which I usually make a point of mentioning to my authors, heated toilet seats that wash you and dry you and do all but burp you. Somehow it seemed inappropriate to mention the toilet seats to Plato.

  But anyway he really was eager for the tour. I don’t want to squander my opportunities for learning as much about your polis as I can, was the way he put it.

  Police? I said to him. I don’t get it. What do the police have to do with anything?

  Sorry, he said. I meant the city. I want to learn as much about this city as I can.

  Mountain View? I asked him dubiously.

  I mean, perhaps, more this city of the Googleplex, he answered.

  Okay, I said. I guess it sort of is a self-contained city. But why are you so eager to learn about it?

  Is not Google the most powerful way of acquiring knowledge?

  Yes, I said, it’s a powerful search engine, but you don’t have to understand how they actually do it in order to use it. Everybody in the world googles, but nobody understands how it works. It’s techno-magic.

  If we don’t understand our tools, then there is a danger that we will become the tool of our tools, Plato said, which I thought was a very astute observation, especially considering how little it turned out that he actually knew about Google or really anything about the Internet.

  I know nobody’s asking me for my opinion, I said, but for my money we could have just skipped this whole Authors@Google thing. They never buy that many books anyway. I usually get very lackluster audiences for my authors, except when Google buys the books and gives them out as goodies, which happens far too infrequently, considering the resources of this place. And I’m going to warn you right now. They’ll have their computers open the whole time that you’re speaking, their eyes glued on their screens instead of on you. That’s off-putting for a lot of my authors, because you know, Rhonda, I may be repeating myself here, but authors are probably the most insecure people in the world. And the more self-infatuated, the more insecure. I don’t know whether it’s the insecurity that drives them to write books in the first place, or it’s writing the books that makes them insecure. All I know is that most of them are as neurotic as a love child of Lindsay Lohan and Woody Allen. Now there’s a thought! Anyway, just don’t let their staring at their computers throw you, I told Plato. The most important thing to remember is that your talk gets thrown up on the Web, and that’s where you’ll sell your books. Just keep looking at the cam and forget that everybody in front of you isn’t listening to a word you’re saying.

  Will they then be watching my image on their screens rather than watching me as I speak? That is very much like a certain scenario I had once imagined.11 In fact, I had thought about speaking of that scenario to the audience here, since there is a way in which what I was imagining there relates to the idea of codes of information from which the whole picture can be generated, which seems to me relevant to ideas which are pursued here, at least from the little I have been able to understand.

  Well, I said, treading carefully around his exposed ego, which is, of course, the first thing you learn in my line of business, they could be googling information about you as you’re talking. That’s entirely possible. And as far as what you should talk about, that’s up to you, of course, but it should definitely be related to your most recent book, since that’s the one that you’re here promoting.

  Plato has this strange combination of sophistication and utter cluelessness. I had the sense that any pimply seventeen-year-old who’s just published his first memoir has a better grasp of what it takes to sell a book than Plato has.

  So they can, as you say, google about me, or about other topics as well, he said.

  Yes, you know “google” is a verb now. As in, you google whenever you want to know anything at all, any subject, big or small, I explained, wondering if it was just the language thing or something else going on here. It’s not as if they don’t have Google in Greece, or at least I assume they do. Of course, if they don’t have lawyers then who knows what else they’re missing?

  You google whenever you want to know anything at all, he repeated, any subject, big or small. So all of knowledge is concentrated right here at the Googleplex, and those who work here are privy to all knowledge. This is so extraordinary it almost strains credulity, that knowledge could be localized in this way.

  Well, as you’ll learn on your tour, the knowledge isn’t actually at the Googleplex. This is just corporate headquarters.

  Where is it then? he asked me. Where’s the knowledge?

  It isn’t anywhere in particular, I said. It’s in the cloud.

  At this he became extremely excited,12 and started asking me all these questions that I couldn’t answer. I mean, I’ve been on the tour too many times to count but I never listen. But your other points, I said to him, about Google being privy to all knowledge? I think you put your finger on something there. Frankly, I don’t even want to think about all the information these Googlers are privy to.

  But it can only be a good thing to have knowledge,13 Plato said, which is an example of the kind of cluelessness that I’m talking about here which seems to go way beyond English-as-a-second-language cluelessness.

  Well, I wouldn’t be so sure of that, I told him. In fact, just last week I was escorting an author who had published a book about all the information that Google is gathering about each of us, which, since Google is a corporation, and the purpose of corporations is to make money, it’s probably selling to advertisers, so that they can tailor their ads specifically to us. This guy, Siva Vaidhyanathan, who’s also a professor like you, said that we think of ourselves as Google’s customers, but really we’re its products. We—all of our secret desires and whatnot, which Google keeps track of by following what we click on—are what Google sells to advertisers.14 I’m not sure that everything he says is right—I mean, I take all my authors with multi-grains of salt, not that I told Plato that—but I do think there’s something creepy about how much Google knows and how it’s always trying to learn more, just gobbling up every fact in the multiverse, which, Rhonda, is not only this universe but all of them and was a VOOM that a scientist I had last week was peddling pretty hard.

  VOOM stands for Vision of Outstanding Moment. All the big thinkers that Cheryl escorts have VOOMs. I can’t remember whether Cheryl made up the word or whether the word “VOOM” was one of her authors’ VOOMs.

  So you’re telling me that the purpose of all this knowledge is merely to make money? Greed is driving the great search engine for knowledge? This bewilders me more than anything else I’ve gathered about this place. How can those who possess all knowledge, which must include knowledge of the life that is worth livin
g, be interested in using knowledge only for the insignificant aim of making money?

  Well, what do you do when you’re faced with monumental cluelessness of this sort?

  Plato, I said, I think you have a somewhat exalted view of Google and the nerds who work here.

  Nerds? he said. Another word I do not know.

  Well, again I was in a somewhat awkward position, since I didn’t want to offend Plato, who struck me, despite his excellent manners and eye contact, as a nerd par excellence. So I fell back on something I’d once heard from one of my authors, who said that the word was originally “knurd,” which is “drunk” spelled backwards, and was used for students who would rather study than party. Anyway, that’s the explanation I gave Plato.

  And the people who work here at Google are all nerds? he asked me.

  I would say each and every one, I told him.

  He smiled and looked around the café as if he had died and gone to philosophers’ heaven. Apparently, I hadn’t done a thing to dislodge his crazy idealized view of the Googleplex. My chosen term for nerd, he said to me, still smiling, is “philosopher-king.”

  Was he joking or what? Cheryl asked me. What do you say?

  I’m not sure, I said to Cheryl, but I think not.

  He wasn’t, she said, only at that point in the conversation I wasn’t sure, so I decided to just pass it off as a joke. These guys, kings? I said to him. I doubt any of them even owns a piece of clothing that isn’t a pair of jeans or a T-shirt.

  You know, Plato said, still surveying the room, I spent the better part of my life trying to figure out how to ensure that those who are most fit to rule are the ones who end up ruling. I gave much thought to the question of how to educate rulers so that they wouldn’t fall in love with their own power.15 But I confess I never once considered what these rulers should wear to work.

  I can see how you don’t give too much thought to clothes, I answered. You’re my first author in a toga.16

  Wait a minute, Cheryl, I interrupted her again. Are you telling me that your author was running around Mountain View in a toga?