Earth’s most prevalent and intelligent corporate since 1998, Google has been busy photographing the world from a satellite, indexing every street address on the planet with self-driving cars, translating every language and most recently, delivering super-fast 1gbps fibre internet to the home.
They’re even a word now.
In the local context, it would be like buying a tortoise and calling it Telkom.
Twenty years ago we didn’t know Google.
Now we simply can’t live without it.
Take my dear little dog.
She’s half Pug and half Labrador.
We called her Fling, because how else do you describe that sort of action between a Pug and Lab?
A few weeks ago she grew a black bump the size of a 5c coin on her face.
My girlfriend activated all panic stations.
The innocuous bump became a terminal, body fluid-spewing hole of cancerous death.
I snapped a pic with my phone and uploaded it to a popular website I found on Google.
In minutes someone had responded.
Ringworm, they said.
I Googled ringworm and found similar looking bumps on doggies from all round the world.
We raced to the vet.
“It’s ringworm!” I proclaimed, before the poor man even had the dog up on the table.
It turns out the Internet was right.
I didn’t even know ringworm is actually a fungus.
I washed my mouth out, post-haste.
I had kissed the poor dog multiple times, thinking she was going to drop dead any minute.
I had given no thought to any infectious properties.
But it didn’t matter: I was right, and my girlfriend was wrong.
Now she owes me back rubs for eternity.
I mixed a bleach solution in a spray bottle for the house, you know, to kill errant spores.
But what if I wasn’t right?
I would like to engage your imagination for a second.
It’s 1873.
You’re in the dentist’s chair.
There’s a makeshift queue of dirty people behind you, each clutching their jaw in a different place, almost bent over with pain. Anaesthetic isn’t even a word yet.
Your dentist, a sprightly chap by the name of Edgar Parker, prides himself on the speed at which extracts your teeth and not how painlessly.
You are the patient.
Your tooth is the problem.
His hands are the cure.
But his fingers are like Google: ten possibilities, ten different outcomes.
You don’t want to play the trial and error game with your body.
A European survey found that 25 per cent of British women misdiagnose diseases while using Google.
An American survey found that over 50 per cent of medical professionals use the Internet to aid diagnosis.
The right information is there.
But the wrong people are finding it.
Take my doggie diagnosis.
I was lucky.
Those Internet users could’ve told me to make my dog gargle my cat and I might’ve believed it.
Visiting an actual doctor or a vet in real life trumps everything.
Remember: all that Google gives you is knowledge.
Knowledge is power.
And power can be deadly when placed in the hands of an idiot.
