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Magazine
HUMOUR
Getting lost
INDU BALACHANDRAN
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On living in a world empowered with Google…
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I found there were 2,84,000 ways to make sambar, so I gave up and ordered a pizza for lunch instead.
The next time someone yells “Get lost!” at you, simply go and search for something in Google. You’ll be lost within seconds.
But at least you’ll emerge knowing an incredible lot of stuff you never knew when you woke up that morning.
Ask me. I recently went to Google for the fastest way to get a better recipe for sambar…and within a couple of clicks I was in a chat room somewhere in cyber space, participating in a lively discussion on wild animals. I had absolutely no idea how on earth I got to wild animals, but was making a great impression with my passion for wildlife…till I suddenly fled from there, as the chat was getting suspiciously passionate by a person named “Wildly-animal”. I escaped with a hurried click and was soon wandering somewhere in Kanha game sanctuary with tigers, leopards, and sambars…oh my god! Sambar! That’s when I realised how I’d been hijacked far away from my original destination, over an hour ago…
(By the time I got more specific and googled “how to make sambar”, I found there were 2,84,000 results for this query so I gave up and ordered a pizza for lunch.)
Just know
But that doesn’t take away from the wonder of Google — the ultimate One Who Knows The Answers. How did we ever do without it? In fact, when you ask small boys these days what they would like to be when they grew up, many answer “I want to be a Google-search-engine driver”. And while we may still carefully dust and keep back on our shelves our 26-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica (last opened in 1999) — it is to Google we run to for everything from finding out what in the world that suspicious lump that’s appeared behind the ear is, to cracking the fastest way to complete a school scrap-book assignment on The Sun.
Well — just a warning should your young child suddenly declare that such a project is due for submission, as usual, late one Sunday night just before the Monday deadline. My pal Cauvery faced this recently — but calmed down from an onset of hysteria, realising she had a life saver — Google Search, and a colour printer. So while her son went happily off to sleep, Cauvery knew she merely had to type in “The Sun” and hit the search button and her child’s homework was as good as done…
Ha! An hour and 40 minutes later Cauvery knew every inside detail about Prince Harry’s break-up with his girlfriend and why Angelina Jolie nearly left Brad Pitt…when she realised that “The Sun” was also the name of Britain’s cheesiest tabloid. By the time Cauvery got back on track, it was nearly time for the sun itself to appear outside her bedroom window.
Has its uses
But there is no doubt that Google equips you very well for interesting party prattle, and makes you appear amazingly well-read and informed, in an instant. Knowing something about anything is literally at your finger tips and, with practice, you can narrow down searches efficiently, so it’s no longer like searching for a needle in a haystack. And of course you must have done the “ego massage search” for your own name — to find out how famous and accomplished you are — thanks usually to someone else in this world with the same name. And unless your family name is Rai, and your parents have imaginatively named you Aishwarya, it is always a curious thing to find your namesake suddenly popping up somewhere in the world; but hopefully not at the top of a list of suspected terrorists. I did this the other day with my own name and am very happy to note that I recently won a coveted Women’s Leadership Award in Australia for work among aborigines, without ever going there.
And while on the subject of Ms. Rai, did you know that you can get 1,970,000 results if you search for Aishwarya Rai, and that too in just .08 seconds, whereas there are only 1,730,000 ways to find Amitabh Bachchan — but only in .25 seconds? See. That’s more trivia to know for party chitter chatter…
After Google
But I wonder if some companies would like to be honest and rename their R & D department as “Google & Development” as searching for information has become completely transformed, forcing libraries to clear space occupied by old, ancient tomes of knowledge and stock up instead with Sydney Sheldon best sellers.
Meanwhile, I really must find ways to cure my Google addiction, and force myself to leave my computer and get out more often. Only I can’t find my car keys and have to search for them now.
Oh Google! There are some things your search engine still can’t do…
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