Every day I am grateful that Google exists. I only ‘googled’ five times today but each one was a one search wonder.
First off was a check on the weather (happily no sign of rain) which helped firm up the plans for the day. Second and third were some nature-related searches for the wing speeds of bees and hummingbird hawk-moths (230 and 85 beats per second respectively) whilst we enjoyed a cornucopia of wildlife on Holy Island.
My next search was to look up the dates of the Power Up retro gaming event at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (3rd to 19th August) – planning further activities for later in the school holidays.
Finally another look at the weather for the evening before we committed to a sunset boat trip around the Farne Islands.
Having such easy access to information has transformed how we can plan our lives. This isn’t new news, but every day with every search it’s a service that improves. Yesterday I didn’t even need to complete the typing of a question and google had auto-suggested the answer as well as the completed query.
What I also love about the instant access to knowledge is the redundancy of pointless dinner time debate when questions of fact pop up. No longer do we have to waste half the main course guessing which country has the larger population, or most varieties of cheese to offer. Questions of fact, whether of use or mere idle curiosity, can be dealt with swiftly and conversation can be moved on to useful self discovery and exploration of ideas.
And if the sacrifice is that phones can’t be completely banned from the dining table? Well I can probably live with that until Alexa starts to join us for dinner.
Lets see what tomorrow’s searches bring
Donovan.