As a child born in the 90’s, I can remember a fair few of the great technological advancements of the late 20th and early 21st century. I remember my Simpsons VHS collection being set aside as I inserted the DVD of Shrek into my family’s much anticipated DVD player. I recall packing away my Game boy Advance and PlayStation one and unleashing the mystical thrills that Nintendo produced. My most shocking realisation was the night that the house phone was free. Where on earth was my older sister? The bottom step of the stairs didn’t seem the same without her sat slumped endlessly laughing, crying, moaning and gossiping. But technology caught her, she was in her room, texting, and the house was a void of silence.
But what I don’t remember is the day, week, month or year when someone said “Why don’t you just Google it?” Where was I? Maybe I was too busy with other technology. Maybe Google just appeared out of nowhere and not a soul questioned it. Maybe everyone knew but me, but one thing is for sure, it is a necessity in my life. Whoever introduced me to Google has my eternal gratitude.
My honest account for Google Searches would have to be as follows: Funny cats, Facebook, YouTube, lyrics, news and the most common but disappointing for results “What is this song, doo daa waaaaa baa booooop?”
Now you can distinctly see that without Google I would be a broken man. I have various images of myself deprived of Google, insanely thin (no just eat), insanely bored (no funny cats), unintelligent (no Wikipedia) and possibly friendless (no Moon pig for all those social occasions).
When watching a film, I definitely do, so I can bet you have at least once said “I’ve seen them in something before. How frustrating. I’ll IMDB it”. I would be a Monkey, incapable of evolving without the knowledge that Mr Darling and Hook are the same! I have sat through so many films just endlessly combing through the archives of IMDB revealing the past work of Actors.
Not a day passes when someone doesn’t recommend a video of a prank, outtake, strange animal or most recently a goat singing ‘Living on a prayer’. YouTube is a video search engine phenomenon. When we search the blue prints to the basic blocks of our life, you can bet nine times out of ten that YouTube has the exact video you’re looking for. Our energy and excitement comes from the mere animation of words, sounds and pictures. I have seen lessons and workplaces stop, just to examine one video. And where would some musicians, actors, chefs, DJ’s and so many more be without the videos dedicated to teaching tricks of the trade.
Google, YouTube, IMDB, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Ask, Bing, have fundamentally shaped the past fifteen years. Not one pub quiz in the UK will allow a single being to even gaze at their phone, just encase they can covertly approach the database of knowledge hidden in the pockets of the World Wide Web.
But where would we be without them? Could we survive? Book shops, dictionaries, encyclopedias atlas’s etc. would still be in popular demand. The world seems so connected with the vast amount of search engines and results. We all ask similar questions, reveal similar answers and are baffled by the mysteries of life.
Google’s mission statement from the very creation was ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. With no doubt in my mind they have achieved this to extreme levels.
I am exceptionally guilty of being ‘utterly dependent’ on search engines. And perhaps without them we wouldn’t survive. The human race might turn into an indigenous tribe that hunt for food and sleep in the trees after breaking from the eternal bonds of the ‘Internet’. Or maybe we would just start reading books again .But they provide free information in such incredible genres and contexts that we evolve by absorbing as much information as possible. So perhaps we are dependent.
Maybe every so often, we should just enjoy the guessing game when watching a film, seek answers from books and give those insane animals a rest.