Ask for Adenium obesum; Google will give you about 12,600 results in 0.12 seconds

2200326606_e8204a5105_o

Or Dorstenia foedita in 0.17 seconds with about 7,830 results*. We truly live in an an age of wonder.

My grandmother was born in the late 1880s – about 16 years, give or take 5, before Wilbur and Orville first flew the Flyer – and she died after John Glen orbited the earth.  I used to marvel at the change she went though, but it is nothing compared to the change we are going through.

True, from horse and buggy to orbit seems like a big jump.  But very, very, few people will ever go into orbit; it just isn't part of our life. But everybody – OK, maybe not everybody, but everybody with a small rounding error – has a computer and access to the World Wide Web. Really, access to an almost infinite well of knowledge.

With a smart phone – and we will all have smart phones soon – we have access everywhere, anytime. All the time.  Astounding! A huge percentage of the world's knowledge – maybe not knowledge, but facts, at least –  is at our fingertips. Literally, as Joe Biden would say. What do walruses eat? When was Hypatia murdered by religious fanatics? How far is the airport from a hotel – any hotel you want – in the downtown section of the capital of Paraguay?

We are living in a time of wonders that were inconceivable 20 years ago.

 * somehow I find it very amusing that Google can come up with results in 0.17 seconds but – apparently – doesn't have time to count the exact number of results

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *