Google It

I went to Chicago with my friend Heather for vacation last week. She is one of my best friends back from high school in California. She stayed in southern California, I moved to New York. She is a bartender, I have an office job. Yet every time we get together, no matter how much time has passed or how differently our lives our shaping out to be, I find there are some universal truths that we can all relate to: men will be men from coast to coast, you can’t beat southern California Mexican food and you can’t beat a New York slice of pizza, and of course, there’s nothing better than catching up with an old friend. This particular trip, we talked about another universal truth that most people of our generation can relate to: Google It.
As we walked down a street in Wicker Park another old friend called me to ask what the name of the presidential candidate who became famous for his Scream Speech was. Howard Dean.

“No, no, no. His name wasn’t Howard,” my friend argued. After a few minutes of back and forth I told her what everyone says when they want to know something: Google it.

Heather laughed and said she says that all the time, it’s your one stop shop, the answer to all life’s questions. What did we ever do without Google? Or text messaging? Or picture messaging? Or internet or iPods…

A recent article in Time Magazine talks about this very phenomenon of Gen Y or X or younger, the fact that 82% of kids by the time they are in 7th Grade are on the internet—multitasking, googling, myspacing, i.m.’ing.

Who said a revolution couldn’t happen overnight? Okay, it took about a decade- but what a revolution it has been. Computers and internet and websites like Google have completely re-shaped the way we live and work and play. Kids don’t go outside to play anymore. If you want to exist in the business world- you better have a website because it’s the face of your company. Friends communicate through text messages and I.M. And it seems as if the entire world – entertainment, knowledge, information, access – is all at the tip of our fingers and click of a mouse.

I didn’t have a cell phone until I was 17, and I don’t think I really used it until I was about 20. I first signed online when I was in junior high or high school, but it didn’t become a daily routine/obsession until the past five or six years. Now I can barely breathe after going a week without checking my email. And a week without my cell phone? Forget it.

It’s a new age of communication and technology has made it all possible. But every once in awhile I try to re-visit the days when I could leave all forms of communication at home, and just go outside and play.