Vee: I think we can all agree that, without internet access, we are fundamentally retarded.
It's not even a joke anymore, just a fact -like eating when you're hungry or sleeping when you're tired- you Google when you're ignorant.
What I find especially interesting about this phenomenon is how the public view has changed along with the service itself.
Before Google was even a sparkle in Larry Page's eye, there were link lists and webrings. These were databases of 'k00l cites', collected and maintained by obsessive magpies of the early internet.
If you didn't have the actual site address -or, god forbid, IP- to one of those link lists, you were well and truly fucked.
Then, there came the Webcrawlers and the Excites, teeming with results only vaguely related to what you had typed into the search bar.
Google was met with a shared sigh of relief.
You type in “DOG” and unlike Excite's interesting interpretation of the query that ended up returning gumbo recipes, Google gave you the definition, history and pictures of dogs.
At the time, this was DIVINE ALGORITHMIC SORCERY.
And it was the geek's secret paradise. You would say the word “google” to a guy on the street and he'd point and laugh at you, maybe mock your speech impediment.
Then it caught on, and in offices everywhere proud secretaries shared it with the other ladies in the steno pool, spelling out very slowly: “double-u, double-u, double-u DOT ... G O O G L E … DOT see oh em”.
But we got greedy.
“Goddamnit, Google,” we would say, “When I type in 'where is pizza' I don't want you to say ITALY! I want you to give me a place I can walk before the munchies set in.”
And Google obliged.
For a brief moment in time it was perfect.
It was almost like the Googles were reading our minds, fused with our neurons and able to anticipate whatever it was we wanted.
Porn? Well, Google. How did you know!
However, convenience soon gave way to fear.
People started noticing that Google knew where they lived, who they hung out with, and their mother's maiden name. They realized they really shouldn't have used those three things for all their passwords ever, and it filled them with a dread that someday, if some nefarious entity were to sway their beloved engine, it could be used to do very bad things.
Now we're left with a strange migration: the geeks who originally lauded and adored The Google, now flee from it in terror, citing privacy concerns and skewed search results. They're finding solace in the bosoms of WolframAlpha and DuckDuckGo, secure in the belief that those fringe services would never betray them.
We shall see. They day will come when the words “Just DDG it, man”, will be uttered at a kegger, and then we will truly see what lays beneath the esoteric surface of the new contenders.
Jaime: I got this Application that allows me to meticulously track calorie consumption, and gives wonderful summaries of daily nutritional values and whatnot - a perfect tool for the health conscious, and one that I was looking forward to using to illustrate how awful and devastating Vee's diet of microwave dinners and chocolate bars must be.
I uninstalled it after it showed that not only is her diet perfectly reasonable, as far as calories are concerned, but that she's getting nearly all of her daily vitamins and not exceeding her daily allotment of sodium, saturated fats, etc... it's hard to live in a world where someone who thinks pretzels dipped in chocolate pudding is a reasonable dinner choice and still manages to look like she does.
