The Pale Blue Dot Should've Appeared on Google's Forehead

I wanted to post a picture of Astrophysicist Carl Sagan not only because he is handsome but also because it's his birthday today. 

Sagan would have been 79.

But then again, it's not simply his birthday that made me search for a picture on Google, but an (glaring) omission on the part of the Google Doodlers to commemorate a famous scientific philosopher's birthday.

Who can forget the paradigm-altering concept of the earth being a mere "pale blue dot", an inconsequential entity in the cosmic scale? 

The fact of the earth's relative inconsequentiality was meant to humble us into seeing how petty the internecine ideological and militaristic warfare between the various tribes of mankind were. 

Is Google's elision of Carl Sagan a sign that the Google Universe is becoming, among other things, Indianized?

Sure the power structure of the globe has shifted and a way in which this shift has manifested recently is the appearance of Shakuntala Devi on Google Doodle.

Shakuntala Devi is a math prodigy from India.

Had Google Universe been operational when America itself wasn't headed in the direction of a pale blue dot on the firmament of global power, then a commemoration of the likes of Shakuntala Devi wouldn't have been conceivable.

But humility is one thing and an Indianization is another. If an Indianization of Google Universe means a forgetting of luminaries like Carl Sagan and a trumpeting of beings like Shakuntala Devi (somebody who built very little philosophy on the platform of mathematics), then I'm not in favor of an Indianization.

I'd rather that Google adopt a more cosmopolitan view in its selection of whom to commemorate.

The pale blue dot should have appeared on Google's forehead to show that Google isn't receding into a coy Indian bride (they have vermilion dots on their foreheads). 

From geek to Greek: A possible journey for Google

The Washington Post recently described Google as a technology "Titan." I'm used to technology "giant."

Dipping into Greek mythology 101, one finds the titans to be a "primeval race of powerful deities," that ruled the earth for a very long time. Unchallenged in their supremacy and confident in the everlastingness of their reign, the Titans came in for the rudest shock of their lives when they lost a war of succession to the Olympians, a race of younger, more powerful and beautiful gods and goddesses.

Thus the naming of Google as a corporate titan is appropriate; it affirms the near-totemic status that google already enjoys as a mega-corporation.

However, if one were to follow Greek mythology to the tee, then the naming is also ominous, for unbeknownst to the namer, it connotes the possibility of Google's fall in the foreseeable future. Who would be the Olympians in the sphere of technology to dethrone Google?

[Certainly not Bing].

Were a fall to happen, then it would be tragic with a fourth dimension--for the deities of Google verse, that is.

I remember reading about the epic demise of the Titans in John Keats' lovely poem, Hyperion.

Hyperion is the only Titan that is yet to fall from power, as the Olympians are taking over. There is a scene in which Hyperion, the about-to-fall king meets the fallen and crushed Titan Saturn. Saturn's fall has taken a deep psychic toll on the once mighty overlord of the mythical universe. Saturn is physically unharmed, but the inside of him is so badly mauled that he can't even get up to go about the business of his daily chores.

Saturn is, in other words, depressed into inertness.

Hyperion tries to inject morale into Saturn, but to no avail.

The tragedy that accompanies a shift in paradigm, especially for those whose paradigm has been thrown out to make place for the new paradigm, echoes hauntingly through the poem.