“Hi, my name is Jaz and I’m addicted to Google” – I’ve thought about saying these words many times after attending a Google-holic’s Anonymous meeting. Then I realised that there is no such meeting in the world.
But the truth is, I am indeed addicted to Google and it’s not in the least bit funny. I have Google as my webpage on every internet based gadget I own- which comes down to just all the computers I use and my phone so don’t get excited. But I feel so powerful to know that no matter where I go, any argument I get into I can prove my opponent wrong- or be proven wrong myself- by the simple click of a button.
How eye sparkling is it for me to see those blue, red, yellow and green letters appear across my screen knowing that the world of information is at my disposal!
Ok, so I admit it: I am certainly addicted to Google. In fact I often use the very blasphemous statement “Google is my Bible” on a daily basis. I even Googled the word ‘Google’ to see what results would come up just so that I could learn about the mysterious search engine.
The thought for the search engine was birthed in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as a research project. Originally named ‘Backrub’, Page and Brin aimed at theorising a better search engine that analysed the relationships between websites. Eventually they changed the name to Google, which was their misspelled version of the word “googol”- the number ‘one’ followed by one hundred zeros. To the two brilliant minds, this signified the amount of information their search engine could handle. 14 years later and voila! We have what was described by BBC Commentator Bill Thompson as the ‘Coca Cola of the internet- sweet, available everywhere and the first choice of the consumer’.
But many have argued that Google, like every other cyberspace entity, has been ‘shrinking’ our brains due to our growing dependence to gather information that is on the surface as opposed to picking up several books and reading thoroughly about the matter. Without a doubt, gone are the days when we use book lists as references and instead resort to typing in key words in the search box and reading the first few sites that come up.
Nicholas Carr, an American writer and notorious blogger wrote an article “Is Googling making us stoopid?” and explored the seeming damage that cyberspace on the whole has had on his intelligence and thought process: 'What the net seems to be doing, is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.'
So after having been involved in a scandalous affair with my fair ‘Google’, I am now ashamed, thinking that for so long I have been a walking zombie dependent on the Search button to fuel my hunger. But I am not alone, I am sure. In fact there are numerous blogs out there where people make a career out of discussing every single feature the mass company has behind its name. In fact, it’s not even just about searching anymore- Google now has an array of services in the form of maps, ads, directories- the works.
But I think we just can’t get away from it. If you asked me, not enough people use it. The amount of times per day I have to give the answer ‘Google it’ to a question that someone doesn’t know is beyond counting. The thing is, why not have information at your fingertips? Is that so bad? Sure, I agree with the experts who feel that picking up a book is always better but in today’s world where technology has without a doubt taken over, why not have walking encyclopedias at hand? In fact, the books that these cavemen speak of are most likely now found online as well.
So I say to every addict of Google out there: Fear not, for there is no harm in loving a fast feed of information. The only thing we have to fear is that our dependence on technology backfires to haunt us in the end: like an I-Robot revolution or something of the sort. But that’s another story…
