M sits across from me at the Bookend coffee shop and googles “left-handed underwear” on his iPad after hearing about it last night from Garrison Keillor on “A Prairie Home Companion.” He discovers that there are 183,000 hits for this concept including one offering the opportunity to buy the item on line and promising that it will "save left-handed men up to 3, often vital, seconds when visiting the loo" (locating this reference is left as an exercise for the reader).
In an excess of gadgetry we now both have iPads, and we’re enjoying the hell out of them. I have downloaded several books and now have a rule that I must finish the last one before downloading the next one I’m interested in. It is incredibly easy and convenient to get them and read them on the iPad. I’ve eschewed the Apple-developed book reading app in favor of Amazon’s Kindle since I already have a long term buying relationship with Amazon and I don’t want to get too cozy with Mr. Jobs just yet.
Now that M’s learned how easy it is to get connected at his favorite espresso haunts, he’s having a fine old time, indulging in every urge to look up words and phrases in on-line dictionaries and Wikipedia, reading his email a little more often (maybe), moving just a touch beyond his former neo-Ludditism. The iPads, which we both carry in our backpacks almost everywhere we go since they are no heavier than a book would be, do bring us a step closer to that thrilling Star Trek nirvana where in every case of curiosity or information deficit, one can simply say in a confident voice, “Computer…” and then ask for what one needs. After a few days of this, M mentioned that he had tried once again, unsuccessfully, to “Beat Google.”
“What do you mean, ‘beat Google?’” ask I.
“You know—search for something it can’t find an exact hit for.”
“Ah—have you tried Googling your own name, in full?”
“No.” Pause. Blip blip blip. “Oh.” Zero direct hits on that search, and another challenge met. It turns out that M flies so far below the radar in Cyberspace and the world in general that there are no exact hits on his full name.
Of course, M has also discovered the seductiveness of being constantly on line—the tendency to look something up, then follow a referenced link, then find an interesting article, perhaps on left-handed underwear or some other topic, and then wonder “what was I doing a minute ago, anyway?”
The price we must pay in the modern age.
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