http://strom.com/awards/318.html
My
working example for the past several years of a New Yorker
Internet-related
cartoon has been "On the Internet no one
knows
you are dog" -- spoken by one canine as he is typing on
his PC,
no doubt using some form of doggie IM. Well, I am
going
to have to update my mental cartoon archive -- a more
recent
panel featured two guys in a bar, one saying to the
other
"I can't explain it -- it's just a funny feeling that
I'm
being Googled."
Well
now, my world has changed. We live in scarier times.
Mistrust
is everywhere. What better way to check out a
potential
girl/boyfriend than to Google them, as first
reported
in the New York Observer about two years ago? (So I
am
little slow on the uptake here, sorry. I'll try to do
better
and stay ahead of the general press in the future.)
Some
people call this Google dating. You enter the person's
name in
Google, and see what comes up. You can find out all
sorts
of interesting things, including their age and
location,
and (in some cases) other people with your name. As
an
extreme example, my cousin has the same name as several
people
from a college women's basketball star to a star in
more
salacious videos, for example.
Let's
face it: Google.com is the hands-down winner of the
search
tools, and has been for some time. I don't think I
have
brought up another search site in years, come to think
of it.
They just do a terrific job (most of the time), and
when I
can't find what I am looking for in the first couple
of
pages on Google, I generally just go away and move on to
something
else. That's the nature of the web these days: we
are too
busy to track something down. Tenacity isn't a
virtue;
it is getting in the way of moving down your to-do
list.
Thinking
about this further, the way I interact with the web
has
also changed over the years. I used to
have a page of
bookmarks
a mile long that had all sorts of sites that I
visited.
I spent loads of time maintaining this list, placing
links
in categories and ordering them by relative importance.
Given
my mobile nature, the way I go through machines and
rebuild
operating systems, and the way the web changes; that
pile of
bookmarks has been pared down over the years to just
a few
key sites. I don't need anything more. And if I do, I
can
always Google something to find out.
So we
now have Google as a verb. Actually, it is an entire
cottage
industry. There are plenty of what I will call the
after-market
sites, trying to pick up on Google's popularity.
A few
examples (I am sure you can find others): GooglePeople,
a site
that can answer "who is" kinds of questions. It isn't
all
that authoritative -- when I put the question "who is the
first
man on the moon" the results ranged from the correct
answer
to Elvis and Forrest Gump.
Then
there is googlism.com, which looks through Google
results
and compiles them nicely in a single place for your
reading
pleasure, to give you an idea of what others think of
you (as
one example of how to use this service). I was happy
to see
that this is what the site had to say about me, or at
least
people with my name:
david
strom is not only knowledgeable on his subjects but entertaining as well
david
strom is one of my favorite tech writers
david
strom is far more competent than we are in networking matters
david
strom is good as usual this week
david
strom is here to help you sort it all out
david
strom is really smart
david
strom is a must
david
strom is a long
(I
won't even hazard a guess where that last entry comes
from,
or how it was completed.)
This
can easily add even more hours to how much time you
spend
in front of your computer. As a side note, the fun
thing
about being master of your domain is getting serious
inquiries
from people who either have your name in common or
who
want to buy it from you. Strom is German for current, and
various
electric utilities in Germany and Switzerland have
asked
me to sell them the domain (although not for very
much).
And I have heard from various David Stroms from all
over
the world, including one gent who lives about an hour
away
and I finally met him when he came to my book signing a
few
years ago. (No, he doesn't look at all like me, and we
don't
have any known ancestors in common.)
The
googling of the Web is one more indication that things in
our
industry have matured. And I am glad that the New Yorker
is on
top of this trend, at least with their cartoons.