Susan and I recently rented a newly released DVD starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. Later on I was writing the review (B+) and I wanted to look up some information on the movie, so I went to Google. I entered “the translator” (not in quotes). It gave about 3 results and then under that said “Results for The Interpreter” with the first link going to imdb’s page about the movie I had watched and whose title I had not been able to remember correctly (getting only “the” correct). I’ve always liked that Google could detect misspellings and ask “Did you mean . . . “, but this is a new level of outhinking otherwise less intelligent human beings.
I don’t think this is good for our future. Evolution worked for centuries making people stronger, with better vision, hearing, etc. Then we came up with machines that could make up for our weaknesses, made glasses for the myopic and hearing aids for the hard of hearing. Now Google is taking away the penalties for being stupid.
By the way, I tried this on MSN and Yahoo just now and got a bunch of results for translator-related stuff.
When I started putting rotating quotes in the blog description I would go to Google and enter the name of a movie and then the word “quotes” (not in quotes) and the first link would be imdb’s page of quotes for that movie. Compare that with going to imdb, searching for the title of a movie, picking that movie from the results page, then scrolling down to some quotes and clicking “more”. It’s actually easier to navigate imdb’s website using Google than it is by going to imdb.
Google is definitely on my list of things that are most awesome. Mankind is allowed to be lazy with all of our innovations. 100 years ago, you had to walk to get anywhere (if you were lucky you had a horse), kids would play with solid blocks of wood, and watching paint dry was considered entertainment.
Well, maybe not the paint…
Actually, I always wanted to watch paint dry… I could just never sit there long enough. But Eric, 100 years ago they had like, radios i think. I mean, it was 1906! But 800 years ago was alot more entertaining than 200 years ago, because they had a lot of feasts and hangings (entertainment for them, not me), and carnivals. Plus, everyone got drunk. What could be more fun?