A Few Things I -Believe- to be True

Upon reading the article and short abstract by Nicholas Carr and Google's "Ten Things We Know to be True," I got thinking about my own religious viewpoint and how something like an online "search engine" could be comparable to such a thing. It wasn't all that difficult, really...for me to say that Google is the Bible of the internet wouldn't be too far off: Just about everybody that looks for an answer to something on the web uses Google just as a Christian might use the Bible. A Zen Buddhist would meditate instead, letting thoughts of every nature flow through their calmed and empty minds. However, if Google's amazing search efficiency could solve some of the world's most-unanswerable problems, we might be in for a hell of a shock. Brace yourselves, things are about to get a bit heavy.

In forms of Buddhism, followers, through diligent meditation and self-reflection, aim to reach "Nirvana," a state of true happiness separate from the impermanent satisfactions that worldly materials. With Google, the aim is instant satisfaction; their job is to help you find exactly what you're looking for as fast as possible. I can't speak for anyone else, but I can pretty assuredly say that Google remarkable efficiency of sorting information instilled in me an expectation of this "instant satisfaction" from using it. I remember back in the early days of Google, I would often have to sift through the results page to piece together the information I was looking for...although if I felt particularly confident in my search string, I could hit the good ol' "I'm Feeling Lucky" button (which needed a considerably greater amount of luck than it does today!). The results page of the Google of old necessitated this exploration which often yielded accidental discovery of something new!

Think about it: If a religion would simply give you a concrete answer to the problems of the universe, provable by all logic and reason, THE answer to our origin and purpose, religion would cease to exist as a concept. A religion would no longer be a system of beliefs, but a list of facts. We would no longer have anything to believe in, since it would all be known. No longer anything to meditate or reflect upon what may or may not be to promote self-discovery and reach that nirvana that we're all aiming for in our lives, it would all just be laid out in front of us, and if we denied it, we would simply be ignorant fools.

If Google were likened to a real-world religion, I think we should still practice one of those older, less refined versions. I believe it was more of a true search tool in that it simply pointed users in the right direction, allowing for discoveries of things that we might not have exactly been looking for, but gained new knowledge from that we otherwise would not have with today's Google. Today's Google, then, is more like an answer or results engine, whereas the old, I feel, is a true search engine.