Is your Google broke?
Posted on 17 July 2010, 6:47
Talking with a friend over lunch yesterday, he told me how he’d emailed a work colleague for help over an obscure bit of software, only to get the message back: ‘Is your Google broke?’ And it made me wonder if the art of factual conversation might be dead, or close to it.
There’s certainly a problem now with asking people fact-finding questions if you’re anywhere near a computer keyboard. Why ask another human being which is the quickest route to the superstore when you can look it up in five seconds on Google Maps? Or why should a child bother their busy parent over whether Jupiter or Saturn is the bigger planet when Wikipedia will patiently and reliably answer the question 24/7?
If only the Net had been around before now! Then those vexing questions of yesteryear would have been dealt with far more efficiently…
Juliet: ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’ Romeo: ‘Check my Facebook status update.’
Diana Ross: ‘Why do fools fall in love?’ Supremes: ‘No idea. Tried Yahoo?’
Jesus: ‘Who do people say that I am?’ Disciples: ‘You’re trending on Twitter and you ask us?’
The thing is, my dad called me earlier this week with a problem about opening pictures sent him by email. It would have been easy to say the polite equivalent of ‘Is Google broke?’ But instead we talked and tried to find a solution, in the course of which I found out more about how PCs handle email, and he Macs, and we got his pictures opened.
Which makes me think factual questions and problem solving are good for people to do together, even when they produce 1,000 search results on Google Almighty.
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