10 Things (I Think) I Think About the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)

Untested Hypothesis #8: But everybody hurts³⁹ [searches].

Factoid: “Google now sees more than 5 trillion searches per year.”⁴⁰  

What’s the difference between seeking and searching?

Simple. In seeking, we usually don’t quite yet know the question. When we search, we do. Yesterday, my son asked me where they speak Sanskrit. (He loves languages.) I told him I didn’t know. (I didn’t.) I looked it up on my phone. The answer (an answer) is India. He said (get this) “I know.” My son not only likes to say things he doesn’t mean, he likes to ask questions he already knows the answer to. He’s not alone.

Searching isn’t bad, nor is answering finite questions with finite (correct) answers. But it’s not enough. Not anymore — if it ever was.

With that said, my son also stares out the window a lot. (So do I.) In those moments — moments of seeking, I would argue — he is in a place that likely transcends language, where finite questions and answers elude him. Often we’re in the local public art museum (he loves the art museum), and he’ll say something like, “I was thinking about this painting a lot this week.” What were you thinking about? “I was just thinking.”

The mind is imminently capable of seeking and searching. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. But if you believe search engines are now simply an extension of the human mind (consciousness?) — and I do — you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t fully explore the expansiveness that extended/exploded mind offers you.  

Mindless searching — just asking Google questions you already know the answers to — isn’t an expansion. It’s an invariably futile self-soothing activity that limits the world you (we) experience.

NEXT: Untested Hypothesis #9: Search ruts are a thing.