A recent BBC headline asked: "Why didn't Harry Potter just use Google?" It seems that on one occasion Harry and his friends looked something up in the library (shock, horror). Which of course is a waste of time, especially when you are busy saving the world.
People quickly wrote in pointing out that Rowling wrote that book before Google existed. But it turns out Harry Potter wasn’t really the focus of the article. He was simply name-dropped to get people reading it. (Good idea. Maybe it’ll work for me, too.) The article commented on the wealth – or rather, the sheer quantity – of information available. How can we know what any of it is worth? (Without asking a librarian, which is apparently cheating.)
For example: Who awarded a doctorate to Gillian McKeith, and on what criteria? Or: which is the more reliable source – Fox News or Al Jazeera?
Of course, the answer to the second question is obvious. George W. Bush is a well-known friend of democracy (Florida 2000 being an unfortunate aberration): and his tanks found it necessary to fire on the offices of Al Jazeera. Therefore Al Jazeera is an enemy of democracy, and cannot be trusted. QED.
But the point is: where someone’s villainy has not been proved in such a clear manner, how do we know who to trust? I am a little alarmed at the idea that schoolchildren (and postgrads and Presidents, come to that) think they can find out all they need to know by Googling it.
I think at least two things are going on. One is that we would like something for nothing. And the other is that we would like it instantly.
In the past, serious study involved serious work. Now, we just borrow someone else’s work (as I have borrowed a BBC headline, but without declaring the fact). We used to look for wisdom as for needles in haystacks: now we pick needles from piles of needles. Better: Google has arranged the needles for us into neat rows. It used to be called plagiarism: now it is called innovative research.
In the same way, this country used to generate wealth by making things. (From materials we had stolen from around the world, granted.) But that takes time. It is quicker to invest in “financial products” – so-called, although nothing is visibly produced. You push a few buttons and hey presto! Nobody produces any goods or any original ideas: we all sponge off each other.
And we are so impatient! Half the charm of cricket used to be its stately pace. Now we invent quicker and quicker versions of it, in a vain attempt to turn it into baseball.
Or again, I read somewhere that goldfish have a short-term memory of 8 seconds. (How do the scientists know this? Perhaps they googled it. Or perhaps they stood with a stopwatch and said to a goldfish: “In 1938, the FA Cup was won by Preston North End. (Pause) … Who won the FA Cup in 1938?” – and the goldfish just opened and closed its mouth.) By comparison, the rapid-fire snippets announcing each X Factor performance last (on average) 3 seconds apiece. The show clearly expects its audience to have half the attention span of a goldfish.
The performers, who seek “instant” fame, have to be a little more patient than that: but it probably grates on them. One contestant was pleased to have given up a serious career in orchestral music for her X Factor shot. I suppose she started to think of the time and effort involved in gaining the expertise required to play the cello to a professional standard. Mind you, these days you can probably google it.
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