|
Is God living on internet under name
of Google?
DO you Google? That isn't a "Yes" or "No"
question - it's more of a "Yes" or "What?"
If you have never used the internet, you might answer "What?
What's Googling?" But if you do use an online computer
to look up anything, you're a Googler.
Google is the index of the internet, a search engine so swift
and all-encompassing that to use anything else is a perverse
waste of time.
Nobody Yahoos these days. Nobody AltaVistas or NorthernLights
or Excites.
I've relied on all these reference websites over the years,
but no more - and though I've been online since the days of
cat's whisker PCs and steam-operated printers and 50-digit
email addresses, there's only one way to define ancient history
in the virtual universe: anything pre-Google is stone-age
technology.
Google's vast banks of database computers in Mountain View,
Silicon Valley, California, hold information of more than
three billion web pages and you can find the one you need
in a fraction of a second.
If you're connecting to the net with a superfast, broadband
connection, as hundreds of thousands of home users and small
businesses now do for less than £1 a day, the process
of finding relevant information has become instantaneous.
In the time it takes to type what you want to know . . .
you know it! If it's on the web, Google is aware of it.
It has limitations, mainly because of copyright laws. Any
books that are still in copyright, which effectively covers
most works published in the past century, are unlikely to
be reproduced fully online, so Google cannot ransack them.
The mathematics of a Google search, called algorithms, were
developed by company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin:
the algorithms are astounding, but they can't thumb through
the bound pages of a textbook. (Not yet, anyway).
This is less of a drawback than you'd think. Pretty well
every newspaper on the planet is now online, either in its
archived entirety or in digested form.
And all but the most well-buried concepts of most books are
quickly regurgitated in some newspaper or other, so even copyrighted
material tends to turn up on Google in a second-hand format.
Google has evolved into an index of global information, so
immediate and so comprehensive that at least one British national
newspaper now commands its sub-editors to Google every fact
and proper name before committing copy to print.
American newspapers have long employed whole departments
of fact-checkers, who verify every detail of every story -
now Google lets even the most short-staffed of local tabloids
perform equally rigorous checks at no cost.
If you spot a misspelled name or address in today's Jewish
Telegraph (and I bet you can't), there's a simple explanation:
Someone neglected to Google.
I've been known to go out and spend £40 on a reference
book rather than admit that I can't remember who said this
or invented that, or where or when. No more - Google is my
slave.
My mobile phone lives with me, fully-charged, every minute
of the day and night. I suffer agonies if I am parted from
it.
But Google is rapidly achieving equal importance - I miss
it every minute that I am without an online laptop.
I break off conversations to dive into internet cafes and
log on to look up some forgotten detail. Google is a Godsend.
The Pulitzer-winning foreign affairs columnist of the New
York Times, Thomas L Friedman, has gone even further. Google
isn't just a godsend, he says - Google might soon be God.
Friedman, the best-selling author of books such as From Beirut
To Jerusalem and Longitudes And Attitudes (yes, I Googled
for those titles), can claim to be the most highly regarded
journalist alive.
It was his interview with Saudi Arabia's Prince Abdullah
which kick-started the current Palestinian peace process,
as Friedman first reported and then dissected the Prince's
suggestion that Israel should fall back to its pre-1967 borders.
So when Friedman sets his sights on wi-fi, or wireless fidelity,
you have to take notice.
Wi-fi means the internet will be broadcast globally, like
a radio signal. Wherever you are, on the street or the beach,
in a cafe or the bath, up a mountain or down the pub, you
will be able to flip open your portable PC and log onto the
net. Log on to Google.
That infinity of answers will be available everywhere. Even
in the synagogue.
One wi-fi provider, Alan Cohen of Airespace, told Friedman:
"If I can operate Google, I can find anything.
"And with wireless, it means I will be able to find
anything, anywhere, anytime. Which is why I say that Google,
combined with wi-fi, is a little bit like God.
"God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and
knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to
God without wires.
"Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google,
and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too."
I'm not going to dwell on the point that both Friedman and
Cohen are Jewish. There are enough conspiracy theorists (try
Googling to find out how many) who think secret Jewish organisations
run the internet.
I do, however, want to point out the obvious flaw in the
Google-is-God theory. Google has created nothing: It just
helps us to find what already exists.
Google does not give us guidance: It just lets us locate
the maps we need.
Google does not inspire us to passion and eloquence: It just
helps us remember what we've already said.
Google is not the Truth: It just supplies the facts.
Google does not strengthen us: It does certainly empower
us.
Google does not fill us with love: The best it can do is
point us towards dating organisations ...
Google, obviously, is not the new God. It is not even close
to becoming humanity's new conscience. But it is on the way
to being mankind's new and infallible memory machine.
Email
him at uri@urigeller.com
|
Engage
Uri Geller - Maximise your potential, the world's leading motivational
speaker
