The Internet Can’t Solve All Your Problems
Why we expect Google to find equally effective answers to ‘how to fix a broken sink’ and ‘how to fix a broken marriage’
Is there anything so satisfying as the moment when you Google some bizarrely specific question — one you believe to be so esoteric only a handful of other mortals have ever needed the answer — only to see the question immediately answered on the first page of results?
I love it. In moments, I can find out how to replace the air filter on my 2013 Toyota Camry. I can learn about the weird bugs on my tomatoes — and how to get rid of them. I can figure out a substitute for a missing ingredient in this evening’s dinner. This is all objectively fantastic and makes my life easier in so many little ways that it’s difficult to completely wrap my head around all the benefits.
It’s also primed me to expect a certain simplicity and ease to the answers that blink into life on my laptop when I tap the ‘enter’ key.
As a technology for disseminating information, the internet has a bias toward the quick, the direct, and the easily digestible. And when you want to know which pair of headphones offers a better value, this is a pretty great bias to make use of.
