Nerd Acumen

Yesterday, today, something like that, Apple’s own Steve Jobs introduced the new Apple iPhone and Apple TV.

Now, let’s talk about this iPhone, rather, the conceit behind it… really, let’s talk about a lot of internet-enabled handheld devices, PDAs, and phones; the whole rigmarole. People are spending hundreds of dollars to get these all-in-one portables so they can call grandma, get directions to the movie theater, email the boss, and do all the other wonderful things we expect from instant access to the web, to people, and to so much more, be it mundane or important. A whole new culture is developing around this. One element of this culture, which I am starting to see more and more, is the ability to Google anything from anywhere. No longer need we off-handedly believe that the longest homerun in baseball was 700 feet just because your brother said so, and that he was the one to hit it, just because he said so, we can now Google it mid-sentence, and prove him wrong right then and there. As so go so many situations of idle conversation these days. In a way, I think it takes the fun out of conversation and person-to-person narrative. Sure, people ‘Google it’, or ‘IMDB it’, or ‘Wiki it’ all the time when machines are so available, but now the matter is a pant pocket away.

Not only does this developing culture make information so readily available, in some ways it takes away from the beauty of KNOWING THINGS. You don’t need to know anything anymore. You don’t have to have even heard about anything anymore. It’s just there, a click or a key away. This is great when you don’t know how to get to the nearest Ethiopian cuisine, but the mind shouldn’t have to free up all that warehouse space because we all have our own ship’s computers now. In some ways, we are wasting our potential to get out there and find things out and come back and share it with the world, or at least, your friends. Sure, once you’ve Googled it you know it, but you really don’t. Don’t get me wrong… I would be lost without the readily available. But, let’s not lose the Ken Jennings’ of the world because of this strange new PDA culture. Enjoy an exaggeration or two every once in a while… then go to the real information, be it Google or the library, and look it up the old fashioned way.

Just don’t Google me mid-sentence.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 1st, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under iphone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.