On the Tenth Anniversary of Google--I Hope We Aren't Getting Stupid

Google started in 1998, and ten years later, we have grown mighty accustomed to getting what we believe are the facts now. This impetuous need to know instantaneously might be making us stupid. That's what Nicholas Carr suggested in his July-August 2008 Atlantic Monthly article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

When was the last time you got through a 600 page book?

Our attention span, our impatience, our faulty memories are all perhaps the result of this ubiquitous search engine. Google is now a verb, you know.

When Al Franken was still doing radio on Air America, he had a quiz. I think the question was: who was the first president to throw a starting baseball at a game where the Senators won?

While he was waiting for someone to call in, Al mused something like this: There used to be a time when there was a very small group of guys who had that information in their heads and showed off their treasures of trivia in verbal sparing matches. Now everyone just Googles.

Watching Sarah Palin last night, I wondered if America was going to buy the marketing of a telegenic fundamentalist Christian woman without any experience as a competent vice president because she can deliver a speech written by a group of talented comedy writers.

I'm not quite sure how she can claim the McCain-Palin team is going to go to Washington to save us from what the other Republicans, including McCain, have done in the last eight years. But she did, and among the cheers and bravado, aided by the pundit commentary last night and today, since Sarah Palin can deliver a speech with humor and good timing, suddenly McCain has a shot at the White House.

Palin charges that Obama is an elitist while Cindy McCain applauds wearing $300,000 worth of clothing and jewelry?

But maybe America has gone stupid. We do get our news from a comedian. Jon Stewart is the fourth most popular "news anchor" in America although Jon Stewart insists he is merely a comedian (watch the riveting interview with Bill Moyers on Bill Moyers Journal. )

We elected George Bush once because people figured they would prefer to have a beer with him than with Al Gore even though Bush had quit drinking. And we elected Bush again despite his administration's tragic failures because he made John Kerry, his opponent, appear effete and cowardly, although Kerry had a distinguished war record and Bush had avoided Viet Nam by pretending to be a jet fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. How did that happen?

It can happen again because we have grown impatient with complexity, with nuance, with the process of how things need to evolve. Sometimes even understanding the problem takes years to uncover. What appears to be cause and effect might just be happenstance. We often miscalculate and create unintended consequences. We can't Google an answer to the difficult issues facing this country: health insurance, poverty, unequal access to public education, a criminal justice system that fosters despair and recidivism, a global economy, energy needs that are redistributing power to people we don't really understand or trust, tribalism, water, the climate, and the very future of our planet. How will we get along as more people compete for dwindling resources?

Just beneath the facade of sarcasm and contempt that Sarah Palin exhibited last night is a deeply rooted authoritarianism that pervades the Republican Party of this century. And a fierceness that is somewhat like the passion of a jihadist: I suspect that Sarah Palin believes, as George Bush does, that she has been chosen by God, by her God.

Now how are we going to wake up, use our cognitive brains again, and stop wanting easy solutions so much that we vote into power people who don't believe in us, but who believe in their own anointment.