Ted, in his Tedly way, came up with one of the most amusing applications of Google I've seen yet:
You Need

It also works well with "thinks". Per Google:
"Claire thinks I need some serious sensitivity training."
"Claire thinks she is a cat."
"Claire thinks that's just plain wrong."

Conversely:
"Ted thinks we've failed to address an equivalent level of complexity in the past."

Or, perhaps more appropriately, "Ted thinks it's ok."

There's a theme in science fiction about what happens when infinite amounts of data are available to individuals--as though with a sheer volume of information, you might be able to achieve some version of transcendence. Any trip to the local library will convince you that (sheer number of Google results notwithstanding) we're not there yet. We've really barely scratched the surface of digitizing content.

But I'm beginning to be fascinated by the way very large amounts of data, queried randomly, can generate seemingly meaningful patterns. We humans are hardwired to look for patterns, so that which seems amusing or even mystical is, really, just random information; but I suspect that as we build larger and more accessible stores of data, we will begin to query it more and more in just these sorts of ways, looking outside ourselves (as we always have) for some sort of answer in the universe.

(Go ahead... ask Google a personal question and see if it doesn't make you think twice. But you have to use first names!)

Labels: culture, Google