 |
He tries not to get the three confused. |
|
| |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Have you played the Google Game? I assume, since you’re staring at the screen, that you know that Google is a search engine, or, as some of us would say The Search Engine. I’m sure Jeeves has his uses, but every time I’ve asked him a question he’s completely misunderstood me. (Well, he’s getting on a bit now and I think he's going deaf.) And Netscape always assumes that I want to buy something. (I don’t, and if I do, I’ll look up yell.com.) But Google is the only search engine you ever need if you spend your days, as I do, looking up obscure bits of information about obscure aspects of our sojourn on this planet. Anyway, the Google game… (And I claim no originality in this, having first read about it in a magazine article) …consists of entering three different word in the hope of getting, not 230,000 possible pages, as one does (not surprising when The Google is flicking through two and half billion internet pages in four-tenths of a second), nor five or six pages, as one does when one is looking up something particularly esoteric, nor even zero pages, as when one invents a word that no-one else has thought of. No, one page is the goal. One page on the whole of the internet that combines the three concepts you have come up with. Try, for example, penicillin, pineapples and Pontefract (for non-Brits: a town in Yorkshire that was once famous for licorice). You’ll find (unless someone has suddenly written a thesis on the subject) that Google throws up just one page. So you may think you’ve won, until you spot the fact that the page it refers to just happens to be P in an online encyclopaedia. And somehow that feels like cheating. So try again. Change pineapple for another fruit, like mangosteen. Bad luck. No pages. You’ve lost. Try again. Maybe a different city, like Chicago and BINGO! penicillin, mangosteen and Chicago gives you one page. It’s not perfect, because it’s a list of academic papers in some library in Thailand, but it’s certainly one better than an encyclopaedia. No, for the Star Prize, what you’re really looking for when you play the Google Game is that one webpage that contains the three concepts you’ve given it, such as the fact that Chicago’s first penicillin was cultured in a mangosteen, or John Updike wrote a short story in which the hero slips on a mangosteen in Chicago, and has to be given an antibiotic. Anyway, trust me. Try it sometime. It’ll give you minutes of fun. Then when you’re tired of the Game, use Google to look up yourself and friends. I’m superstitious about checking up on myself too often, however, because while I tend to have several pages at the top of the list, grumbling further down are my namesakes. Currently the first of these is Martin Foreman, the ex-US Air Force man who now works as an experiential therapist, then there’s Martin Foreman the Australian lecturer, although what he lectures in isn’t clear because the page Google lists no longer exists, then there’s several more of me before a Martin Foreman appears on genealogical page, where it seems he farmed in Nebraska in the early nineteen-twenties, the son of Polish immigrants originally called Furmanski. But I get bored with myself and my namesakes pretty quickly, so moving on from me, but only slightly, I decided to check on the profile of First and Fiftieth. (I know, we've been here before, but since publication date is approaching fast, you’re going to have to put up with these continual bursts of publicity. I promise the next column will be as far removed from myself as I can get.) Most Brits don’t understand the reference, but Americans do. It’s an intersection, in this case First Avenue and Fiftieth Street on Manhattan, where a pivotal event in the title story occurs. Anway, that — briefly — is beside the point. I decided to check the title on Google and, lo and behold, the book's website was the first page to be shown. So far, so good. Then I decided to look and see what other webpages were using the expression. And what an exotic can of worms that exposed… First up is Brian’s House, reminding me that the first and fiftieth days of Pentecost are to be kept holy, and handily provides me with a calendar for the current year 6007 (ie since Creation). I note that Brian’s House is plagued with online advertisements as the Egyptians were by locusts and return to Google to move down the list. Item number five compares the first and fiftieth editions of the SOAS African News (London School of Oriental and African Studies for the uninitiated), but I decide to pass, in favour of the Animal Welfare Institute, a US organisation looking back over its first fifty years. The AWI are followed by a group of precision shooters somewhere in the US of A. Both the question and the answer pleased me. “How stiff was the competition? There was only a difference of .200” in the 100 round group aggregate between first and fiftieth places! He who was able to maintain his concentration the longest was regular customer Hoosier DeWayne Wood whose fine 100/200 yard two-gun aggregate of .2 377” took all the marbles.” Lucky DeWayne; I hope he didn’t lose them on the way home. And then we’re into Dungeons and Dragons territory. “4 Hendric V: In this year Pontifex Gregor XV passed to Judgement. And Leothar is now Pontifex, and he is the first and fiftieth of that name, and from Saint Leofric the three hundredth and second and fiftieth Pontifex. And he hath issued an Edict, which is called the Edict of Corrections, in which divers heresies of the Artanian church are refuted.” It appears that Old Gregor and upstart Leothar are inhabitants of the mediaeval barony of Allardsby, which is “a small fief in the far northwest of the Kingdom of Camberland. The wilderness is nearby; the mountains are home to barbarian clansof doubtful pacificity; news from the central regions comes slowly or not at all. For most people, in short, life is hard enough and self-contained enough that Allardsby is their entire universe.” I would have stayed, but my visa wasn’t valid, so I retired to Googleland. Next on the list is Poo magazine, with the extract “He passes the path to the power lines where he kissed Danny for the first and fiftieth time.” I’m intrigued, and click on a few paragraphs in the middle of story written by Juicy Lucy. Danny, it appears, is a girl and Ray’s a college student. No, it’s not pornographic, and yes it’s well written, and I’d like to read more, but I’m on a mission, so, like a time traveller or teleport addict, it’s back to Googleland. I’m offered Pentecost and Allardsby again, but prefer to enter the Access Denied! Bookstore, whose slight thrill in the name diminishes as the dread words “in association with Amazon.com” appear. It’s part of the website of “Robert M. Schroeck, gamer, author, husband and a few other things” and again it’s interesting, but I’m coming to the end of my column and I need to click on another site or two. Next up is Dion Fortune, “an occultist the likes of which legends are made”. An author of fact and fiction (a tremor runs up my spine), “while all the ‘textbooks’ (as her non-fiction is sometimes called) have a broad scope, Dion Fortune is able to restrict herself to the topic at hand, covering it with sufficient insight to allow students to find useful tidbits (sic) the first and fiftieth times through.” But I must pass on, as Dion has done (in 1945). The next site is entitled “Common Objections for Life, Annuity & Credit Form Fillings” and the one after that is “Measurement in Manufacturing Ergonomics”. And so on and so on. I’m tired; it’s time to come home. And the moral of the column. Absolutely none. But it was fun. And now it's your turn. Go on, give Google a go! |
N |
Nothing |
Nothing |
 |
 |
| 22 October 2002 |
 |
|
© Martin Foreman |