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Thursday, November 04, 2004
I experienced something rather odd and frankly embarrassing yesterday. Those of you who work in an office, or spend a long time every day sitting at a desk, will understand that flavour of boredom that can only be tasted by having done everything you need to do with 7 hours still to go. Why we can’t just go out and play once we’ve done our jobs I don’t know, but they do like to have bodies in the office. Anyway, back to the embarrassing experience….
I’d done all my work and been for lunch (and come back), read all my favourite blogs, scanned my forums, done some pretend shopping at Apple and play.com, looked on Auto Trader for a Land Rover, walked around the building a bit, gone to the toilet and read the noticeboard, got a glass of water, tidied my desk, checked I hadn’t forgotten to do something, and stared out of the window. I’d done everything I could to keep myself looking busy without having to resort to facing my screen and tapping randomly at the keyboard. I still had a couple of hours to go so I had to come up with something. So I Googled a few names from my past. Nothing. I switched to Google Image and put a few names in. Nothing. I put my own name in. Nothing. I even Googled ‘google’ which isn’t as interesting as I thought it would be - I quite like postmodern, self-referential, cyclical stuff like that.
I then hit on a genius idea; use Google to search my past. I typed in some stuff from the old days, like some names of friends but also my old schools, places I used to live and work. I trawled through the results, looking at buildings, faces. It was quite good. I then found myself searching for old conversations I’d had, snippets of gossip, good times, happy feelings. I did this for quite a while before I realised what I was doing: even though Google is pretty powerful, I can’t use it to search through my life.
I felt like such a fool and quickly checked over my shoulder in case anyone had spotted what I’d been doing. I’d got away with it. Phew! But I felt disappointed, I’d really believed that I’d be able to Google my past and see it all on screen rather than have to think about it in my brain. But apparently that’s not possible.
This isn’t the first time I’ve mixed up the real and virtual worlds. I used to look for the ‘Apple+z’ key to undo real actions I’d done like dropping something or saying something stupid.
I think I need to get out more.
.....posted at 10:37 am permalink
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