Editorial: Reflections as Google turns 25, another giant step for humanity

Was there really a time we didn’t resort to asking Dr Google for the answer to anything and everything? Photo / 123RF

Editorial

EDITORIAL

How on earth did we ever cope before Google?

The giant internet search engine marked its 25th birthday this week.

With billions of search queries submitted each day and almost 85 per cent of the market share according to latest statistics, many of us would struggle to remember a time when we didn’t resort to asking Dr Google for the answer to, well, anything and everything.

And a whole generation has grown up not knowing anything else.

Google owed its genesis in part to the work of three New Zealand computer scientists, whose 1995 book Managing Gigabytes influenced the Silicon Valley tech whizzes developing a way of sorting and retrieving the vast information going online after the advent of the World Wide Web in 1993.

Now the tech race has entered a new era again, as Google follows Microsoft, with a revamped search engine powered by artificial intelligence as generative AI models fast become the new way to develop content.

With each giant step for humanity, there are - rightly - questions about the abuses versus the uses of technology.

Perhaps it is comforting to know then, that the old-fashioned repositories of information, aka libraries, are still relevant.

Library membership is still high, physical books are still being issued in their millions, showing reports of the death of the book to be at least partly exaggerated.

It seems variety is still the spice of life and people of all ages still enjoy snuggling up with a good book in physical form, even as others enjoy the benefits of digital reading on a range of devices and platforms.

An increasing number of libraries around the country are removing fines for overdue books, reducing the stigma of returning them and thereby increasing access to their resources.

It is pleasing to see physical children’s books are still readily available too, as a tactile screen-free alternative to digital devices.

While for some the “rise of the machines” may be the ultimate existential fear, given how dependent we now are on technology in so many areas of daily life, the greater panic would surely result from a total system shutdown where we were forced offline and offgrid to be reliant on old-fashioned face-to-face communication and resourcefulness - and the old survivalist handbook gathering dust on the shelf!

Between the two extremes then we must strive to find a happy medium, but we should remain mindful of not letting the sheer pace of technological change overwhelm our ability to adequately analyse and adjust to it.

It is worth taking a moment though to reflect on the amazing achievements of past decades, of humans’ capacity for imagination, innovation, creativity and exploration, of the inventions that have lifted us up and represent the very best of us.

We can only wonder at what might be next in store.