Did I say that right? Or is it “I’m not the smartass you think I am”? Being a geek working in IT (both at my job and when NOT at my job), I get asked a lot of technical questions. I’m happy to answer them, but many times my answers don’t come from just me. I often google the question, then pass that information on in my own words, making it seem like I am an all-knowing supergeek, when, in actuality, Google is.

It always amazes me how Google can translate even the most confusing and misspelled sentence or question into exactly what you were trying to search for and give you 1,254,233 relevant search results in a split second. Granted, most results beyond the first page are totally useless and are only based on a key word or two in your original query, but they are related in a small way.

That first page–and usually the first or second link on that page–most likely contains exactly what you were seeking. It’s like an ever-expanding infinite encyclopedia that combines the knowledge of everyone who posts anything on the web–basically the entire world’s connected population. My mind boggles.

Remember actual Encyclopedias? I remember collecting several complete sets. There were like 20 or 30 volumes in a complete set, and you often got them one at a time, starting your collection from an “Encyclopedia Salesman” who went door-to-door selling them like they did vacuum cleaners. You’d get a new volume each month and your parents paid for it. Or sometimes you could get a volume or two at the grocery store each shopping day to add to your set until you completed it. I don’t remember how much they costed, but I’m sure it was pricey for the time. But it was knowledge, and my parents, though reluctant and not wealthy, invested in them for the family’s cumulative educational benefit. I ate them up. We even bought a huge two-volume “Complete Dictionary” set that included a “younger” version of dictionary with many illustrations and artwork and a grown-up, very compact small-print dictionary containing every friggin’ word ever imagined in the English language. But no slang. No “urban dictionary” nonsense back in those days, that’s for sure.

That was my “Google” back then. Am I showing my age? Whatever, that’s my history and I’m proud of it. It made me who I am today. It gave me that thirst for knowledge that had never been fully quenched. And today’s Google is just a gazillion times (or a googol) larger and that much more awesome than it was back then. Yeah, that’s spelled right, look it up.

So back in the day, I’d run to the bookcase and grab the relevant volume for the letter of the subject I wanted to find out more about, look it up and soak it in like a sponge. Today I just open a browser on a computer and type in my question, or just pull my phone out of my pocket and thumb it from literally anywhere. Knowledge is what? Power? Then Google is the most powerful entity ever created. Or the Internet is, I’m not sure really… How good is the Internet without Google? It’s Alta Vista. Not so good.

I can’t imagine a world without the Internet now, but I worry, with the current pandemic now seeming to subside, that something much worse could easily take it all away. We need to appreciate what we have much more than we do. It could all just be some geek’s weird wet dream that could vanish in an instant when he wakes up.