Where Would I Be Without Google?

Apparently, I am a master of wasting time. The lack of a television set in the living room hasn't changed a thing.

I now fritter away endless hours at the computer instead of the TV. The difference between then (TV addiction) and now (computer addiction)? I stay awake. And I utilize more of my brain.

Any time I have an unanswered question, I google it. As I was googling one of about a million queries lately, I stopped for a millisecond and wondered 'what would I do if I didn't have a computer?'

I would become my mother. I am almost sure of it.

Mom has always had reference books in the house. I was very young when she got her first set of World Book encyclopedias and also a set of Childcraft (which undoubtedly played a part in my instinct to refer to reference materials when in question). Decades later, Mom still refers to her encyclopedias to find an answer that she is looking for.

I have never in my life met a person that quite literally wears out dictionaries. Mom does.

Atlases, school readers from when she was a child, history books from each of the small towns that were in the farming community where she grew up and lived half of her life, biographies, books on the royal family ... these are what you will find predominately in Mom's library.

 Mom has a thirst for knowledge that is never quite satisfied. She enjoys being around people who have a 'quiet' intelligence. If she had grown up with the opportunities that we have these days, I cannot begin to imagine what she would have done with her quest to learn.

There is one reference book that she doesn't have. It is the one that has the lyrics to all of the songs that she remembers. We have chatted on the phone at times when she was be talking about a verse she couldn't quite recall. I googled it as she spoke and she was (initially) quite amazed at this arsenal of information at my fingertips. Since that time (and it makes me smile each and every time I hear Mom's voice utter the words), she has phoned on occasion and asked, "Can you google _________ for me?"

As my curiosity is quickly satisfied by my ability to google anything and everything ... I cannot help but wonder what reference books I would surround myself in, if it were not for the convenience of the Internet.

We are a very fortunate generation. The one thing that frightens me is what do we retain, when we have so much ... so readily available? Will my brain go lazy because I know that I can find the answer quicker than I could try and recall an answer I already know? 

Thankfully, I live with a few of those from the Google Generation (and the History Channel; the Learning Channel; and a wide variety of other educational television channels), and I am amazed and astounded by the retained knowledge of those following in my footsteps.

Television and the Internet are often given a bad rap. There is a lot of garbage out there. But the potential to learn, expand and satisfy the quest to learn is at our fingertips. "Seek and ye shall find."