Answer me: Why don’t they stock up on Dr Pepper in the supermarkets?
I believe I’m of the age-group that straddles the digital divide – half my age group are computer-illiterate, while the other half seems to have a PDA stuck in their back-pockets at all times, and they don’t even have to take it out of there because there’s bluetooth and all that. So they tell me. I think they just like the feel of something digital down there.
The point I think I’m trying to make here is that we’re so used to asking the ingterneck for answers to every little mundane detail, that we’re completely stumped when we don’t have high speed brogbang ingterneck, and we’re really taking knowledge for granted, just like how some people say learning how to spell is redundant because nowadays, even your phone got speow check.
Like how my father sometimes wants to look up more information about other minor side effects of Parkinson’s medication, only he can’t, because he hasn’t taken enough of a dosage to be able to operate the keyboard without frustrating himself. Still, he has this thing called ‘Speed dialling your son to get answers’.
I know of someone so used to Googling things, that when he doesn’t quite understand what you’re saying, instead of asking you to rephrase or elaborate, he says, ‘what does that mean? google it google it google it!’
So anyway, I’m barely hanging in there trying to catch up with the ingterneck, and I’m beginning to see myself slipping behind as chatter about something called “Web 2.0” seems to get louder and louder until I cannot ignore it any more and have to Google it!
Technorati Tags: singapore, web 2.0, yahoo! answers
It seems that this “Web 2.0” is the ingterneck, except when you ask the ingterneck a question, another ingterneck user answers your question for you. Or something like that.
Much like how this blog is an authority on Fiona Xie, Sumiko Tan and any other local celebrity you wanna poke a stick at. Serious. Google the question, “how often does Fiona Xie change her underwear”?, and I can guarantee you this blog will turn up in one of the results pages.
Lately I’ve been seeing television ads for Yahoo! Answers, which is Yahoo!’s answer to how Web 2.0 should be implemented. How it works is this. You go to the Yahoo! Answers page for your locality, and they give you 100 points even without you asking them to. You just have to ask a question. Subsequently, every time you ask a question on Yahoo! Answers, you get docked 5 points.
If you answer a question (not your own), you earn 1 point, and when your answer gets picked by the asker as the best answer, you get 5 points or something. So I decided to give it a go. So far, very disapppointing. Then again, maybe my question was too hard to answer. I dunno. I was quite fed up with one of the answers, really, and looking at some of the questions and answers given, the whole thing looks and feels more like “Web 1.99b” than Web 2.0.
For the most part, it’s still faster to ‘Google it’, and get your arguments resolved quickly – like how this afternoon, I found out that yes, tomato juice has citric acid in it and therefore is still acidic in the stomach, although to a lesser degree than orange juice, don’t ask me why I had to google this just trust that there are domestic issues at stake.
There really are other places on the ingterneck that would be able to come up with the answers to your urgent questions a lot faster than waiting on other users who sit around answering your questions. Like you know, if you wanted answers to the question of why public servants deserve to be remunerated so handsomely, all’s you need to do is to get yourself on to Channelnewsasia.com?
Yes. Nobody guarantees you’ll get the right answer.
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