Thoughts on Good Guide

Well, as we saw from the in-class demonstration, GoodGuide has a ways to go before it becomes a cohesive guide for consumer awareness. Frankly, it seemed as though very few of our searches, most of which were for fairly common items, yielded any results at all. However, I understand that this is a new website innovating a whole new concept which will require collecting and compiling massive amounts of information into a palatable html form, which is likely to take years. Wikipedia wasn't built in a day either, and that website requires much less research and fact-checking. Each entry into GoodGuide will require lots of information that I wouldn't imagine is always very easy to find.

But I really think that it's brilliant, in this new age of info-conglomerating websites (Wikipedia, iMDB, All Music Guide, etc.), for someone to compile this sort information in a practical way. It takes the maxim of these websites (to be a one-stop shop for everything in its field) and applies it to something much more important. Consumer awareness is an issue. Sure, foods are required to list ingredients and nutritional facts, but information regarding the environmental and social implications of the product, as well as whether or not those listed ingredients are actually safe and healthy, is elusive to the average consumer. If GoodGuide does indeed evolve to the point that any item in a supermarket can simply be scanned with a phone and rated for these categories, people's buying habits may change drastically for the better. On this issue, I don't think that laziness and apathy necessarily go hand-in-hand. I believe that people would, if it were made easy for them, support products that are better for their health and the environment, even if they are somewhat more expensive.

Internet data-compiling and consumer awareness are really a match made in heaven, and I think it's wonderful that someone pieced that together and is carrying it out. I am optimistic that this website could become something really great, and even go so far as to change consumers' behavior, for the better, on a large scale.