GOOGLE: KNOW ANYTHING AT LITTLE OR NO COST

"There shouldn't be dull persons in the world anymore."

"Uncle, do you have a game in your phone?" 7 years old Ayodeji asked me. I visited their Festac home. His mom, MyLady as I fondly call her, wasn't around, so my company was kept by her two sons, Ayomide being the younger.
To his question, I replied "No, I don't have a game, but I have something in my phone that will let you know anything in the world." Curious at my saying, he came close. I opened the Opera Mini browser on my phone and asked him, " What do you want to know?" He looked up, thought for some seconds and asked, "Where does water come from?" I googled that and in a space of seconds, Google replied with a long list of links to articles. I click one of the links and read out the article to him. As I read, he listened with surprise and interjected, "My aunty (class teacher) said so, yes she said so" From his facial expression, I saw astonishment as he wondered how what his aunty told he and other pupils in his class some days back got to my phone.

Gone are the days when a lot of information was very scarce and to get some vital ones, a lot of books must be opened with long hours dedicated to finding such information. Now, whichever one it is, it is just a click away. The Internet has really done wonderfully in this time and age. The search engines, Google to be precised, are the best things to have happened with the advent of the Internet. This is because anything can be known with it. In church, about eleven years ago, our pastor wanted to quote a portion of the Bible but he forgot the book, chapter and verse it was; he told us some lines in the quote though. At the end of the service, some of us took it upon ourselves to peruse the Bible; we went on an ultimate search to find the quote. We did that for some hours but all to no avail. We got tired and concluded that we would stumble upon it someday. Well, our pastor got it some days later. That aspect of the Scripture is Joel 2 : 28 - 32. Oh, if only it was now; or better still, if only we had internet access then, it would have been a matter of writing a line of the quote in the search column of google.com, click search and in a matter of seconds what took us hours to seek, without success, would have been found.

Google.com has saved me time and time again. It has helped in every aspect of my life: educationally, economically, socially, spiritually, physically and what have you. From links to articles and write-ups provided on the website, I have solved a lot of problems, a whole lot. But sadly, many people (especially young people) who have access to the internet have failed woefully to utilize it to the fullest. Unlike some seven years ago in my country, internet-enabled mobile phones are now available to every Tom, Dick and Harry; but what has most people done with it? Well, you might have guessed right; young people have become photographers overnight! They take photos with the camera in their phones. Every available space has been transformed to a perfect studio for taking snaps. They take #Selfie anywhere and everywhere: in buses, at bus stops, in schools when lecture is ongoing, in churches when sermon is being preached. More interestingly, toilets and bathrooms have become photo studios too; they pose in front of the mirror there, snap the reflection of themselves. These photos are then posted on social media communities: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest, for their friends and foes to see. You might argue that in one way, they are making use of the internet, but I tell you, that's the only way so many people use the internet. Recently, a young girl, who claimed to be an undergraduate, was asked how she uses her Blackberry phone. She said she makes call to her friends and ping them on BBM, also she chat with some other friends on various social media platforms. That's all. From her answer, I began to wonder if she truly is an undergraduate as claimed; if she is, how she does those assignments, give by lecturers, which need extensive research baffles me. I wondered whether she knows google.com, that website that provides answers to any questions (well it provides link to the answers) no matter how serious, tedious, funny or nonsensical it is. I ever got annoyed with her in my process of wondering. That is the way many phone owners use their phones. They use other aspects leaving out the most important of all; this can be likened to eating a plate of well cooked rice and salad but throwing away the meat (which is seen as a reward for eating the rice by some people).

There shouldn't be dull persons in the world anymore. This is because we have the opportunity to be grounded in any aspect of knowledge without even opening a single paper book. Wouldn't you rather take this as an advantage? Whatever you want to know: whether how to make money, how to attract the opposite sex, how to communicate with people, how stuff works, how to do things yourself or information on any field of study and anything else, it's just a click, or better still, it's just google.com away.