DISQUS

I suppose the question is: If the whole thing is kept as a roughly "survival of the fittest" arena, will Google's framing of "fit" as "fast" itself be fit enough to survive?

And that, I suppose, depends on how many competitors Google has in the arena who are offering alternative interpretations of what it means to be "fit."

I'd have to argue that one's tendency to want a herd about one is more than pragmatic, however. More fundamentally, isn't it that we want to be valued, to not be rejected (to feel alone)?

After all, without difference between yourself and another, you can't feel threatened by him/her. Hence Locke's view of the body politic. (If we all pretend we're one "body," we'll all be less likely to feel threatened by each other, and thus less likely to get into altercations).