You Make Me Google
Before you reach for your smart phone, pause. Put the question, prompt, to your large living language model. Give your retrieval system a moment or two to explore the inner reaches of your mind, memories, images, sounds. Pause.
Your brain, the physical part, is sort of like a muscle. If you don’t exercise you’re mental muscles you’re going to go soft. That’s what’s happening to our modern culture. No one reads books. Too long. Too slow. Not interactive. And most of our kids are addicted to TikToks like adderall. A tiny, legal, hit of dopamine in the rush of inane and mindless “content.”
Most influencer content is just a rambling jumble of, “Hey guys, I just wanted to show you my new…” Yada yada yada, here’s the link to buy now. It’s not surprising that my 22 year old daughter comes up with a burning desire for something new, something branded, something hot, about once or twice a week. The good news, she’s about to be out of college and into a good job at a local hospital. So, I get my daughter back, and eventually, some of my cash flow back.
It’s more about the flow of intelligence that I’m worried about. If you keep Googling everything with your phone or your Alexa, you’re missing the pushups that your mind would do if you would prompt yourself and not the cloud. The reflections you get from your phone, the black mirror, are unhealthy, unreliable, and unrealistic. I don’t want a Kardashian butt. Or their money. Or fame. Well, that last one is a little bit harder. Tough to discount fame and fortune when you’ve never tasted private jet money.
“You make me Google,” was a playful line my girlfriend and I used to banter about. It was cute. You’re intelligent enough to ask hard and insightful questions. And we made a game of not Googling trivial questions that came into our conversation. “You know, that actress from Orphan Black, she was so good? What’s her name?”
Wait up. Don’t Google it. Flex your mind. Untether your soul from the rush of social spam and advertisements designed to ignite your need for something new, something cool, something exciting. A new pair of tennis shoes is not exciting. Nice. Fun. But not the goal.
more Short-Short Stories from John.
