Ranting on "Search"
I would like to address Battelle's concept of "Search" What is search? Why do we search? He lays out many answers for us. Search is the act of looking for something, trying to find something. The reason for searching is the same, to find something. I am really interested in his idea of the types of searches. on pg 32 he says:
"There is search to recover that which we know exists, and then there is search to discover what we intuit exists, but have yet to find."
Recovery and Discovery. It seems so obvious that these are the reasons for searching. One of those stupidly simple statements that just sticks to the lining of your brain. I search to find something I have lost, or I search to find something that I think (or hope) exists. This is like a metaphor for life. Either we live in the past, constantly trying to reinvent it, forcing the past onto our present, or we look ahead; searching (living) for some ethereal "thing" that we just "know" or hope exists. Of course nothing in life is so black and white and we are each living within our own little shade of gray amidst an infinite spectrum.
It is incredibly stupid that I am constantly relating little quotes to my entire existence. I started of just free-writing hoping to get a little start on my paper. Of course I will need to take myself out of it, rather, "one needs to take oneself" out of the story. There can be no I, no me, only the collective one...we.
How did Google rewrite the business anyway? Did they just take an idea and role with it? The age-old slogan "knowledge is power" surely must have flashed in their heads the instant they realized what their technology could do. It is awe-inspiring that one day soon every piece of written knowledge, that mankind has ever created will be able to fit on a little piece of hardware smaller than my little finger. My mind reels. What does this mean for us? Sure it’s all sci-fi and fantasy paranoia, but if you told people from the 1800’s some of the things WE do today you would be put in the asylum, or burned. Our ancestors had the same brains as we did, capable of the same thought. The truth is however that we are not limited by our intelligence, but rather our society. We limit ourselves. We impose our own boundaries. If we take this literally, it is both remarkably freeing and incredibly sad at the same time. But here I am living in the past. Do not dwell on the past and forget to live in today.
That is some old saying.
Anyway, I have completely lost my train of thought, but I will post this anyway and hopefully between now and Friday, I will have worked out some sort of paper!