Truth: Life Without Search Engines

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  Imagine your life without a search engine. Many and most people still don't use them. I reckon though, that you do.  I use it, at least once a day for something.  I'm looking up how to spell words, how to get definitions. I'm looking for directions, and reference points.  I often use it to search images as well.  I look up old articles, and I use wikipedia quite often to get biography information.

What did we do before search engines?  Oh yeah, the library.  Oh yeah, the dictionary.  Oh yeah, the encyclopedia Brittanica.   Hard to imagine a life like that, but learning something new was not at your fingertips. You pretty much had to take notes in your book, or you had to write down important points of information.  Oh so that's what an index card is used for!

I'm on a political discussion group, and there's a crazy cat who tries to bait me, buy doing 3 year old searches on Ron Paul...trying to get old stuff and post it as if it were somehow relevant today.  I imagine he spends alot of time googling stuff to support his side of the argument.  It might make him feel good, as I'm sure it does anyone who is looking to support their stance to find something.  What would he have done in the past?  I mean that's great to get something so quick..however what did we do before that?  We just relied on our memory, or what we perceived to be the truth.  I'm not knocking search engines or getting things so quickly...I think it is great. However what it does, is make everyone an expert instantly.  At least it makes them seem that way or feel that way.  Hey look what I searched!

If you are going to bring it, you had better understand that the Googlers are going to pepper you with hoards of information at their fingertips.  They will bring it too.

So two things are happening. The first is, everyone can blast information that they have gathered and put it in your face.  False and misleading information can then become gospel just because it is out there.  Scary thought.  The second is, there is so much information because of search engines, you will need to figure out what is correct and what is not...and filter out the good from the garbage.

The information age amazes me.  The Library of Congress recording every keystroke is pretty cool, and again at the same time scary.  Search and destroy takes on a whole new meaning.  Wikileaks or Wikipedia...information you can count on. Count on to do what? That's the everlasting question.  I tend to think it puts a strain on any critical thinking or rational thought.  Life is becoming easy.