On the power of the Internet

Before I started this blog a little over a month ago (happy onemonthaversary to me!), I struggled a little to find a catchy title (seeing what I came up with, you might not be surprised to hear that I struggled). When the word “giraffability” struck me, I googled it to make sure it wasn’t already a word that I simply had missed out on – one of those huge vocabulary glitches that sometimes just happens. Google came up with one hit, directing me to a soccer (sorry, football. Must. Not. Turn. Completely. American…) fan site, discussing a player that was tall and lanky. There is absolutely no chance I have visited this website before, and thus I can say with 100 % certainty that I came up with this word quite separately from the football lover. As long as there were only the two of us out there that had made up this word, I was fine with it. I took giraffability to my heart and used it in my blog title.


Now, for some reason I decided to google "giraffability" again today (this is the sort of mindless thing you’ll find me doing when I am avoiding the fact that there is a great big master’s thesis waiting for me to write it). In 0.11 seconds google came up with "about" 388 hits.

I must admit this surprised me a little. Yes, I made my blog googlable (a word I did not make up – or rather – I did, but I assumed someone else already had, and true enough – if you google "googlable", 0.5 seconds later you’ll get "about" 65 500 hits, including one that directs you to a Wiktionary page complete with etymology). I made my blog googlable, but I didn’t expect this to have much more impact than the fact that if you google “The Giraffability of Digressions” you would get a hit (in all possible meanings *snicker*).

Many of the 388 hits (I didn’t check them all, but I did look at a few) are indeed links either to this blog, or to blogs of people who have been so generous as to include me in their blog roll. One hit took me to a neat little page I didn’t know existed – Networked Blogs apparently lists all its blogs according to topic, and mine is number one of the “Top 50 blogs in: giraffes” (though in total there only are three, so I’m not sure the accomplishment is all that great…). One of the hits still leads to the football site.

But then there are about 300 others that I couldn’t quite figure out why would pop up in that search. They led to everything from fraggle rock merchandise stores to a website for pictures of pirate ships. I looked at a few of these pages, but could find no reference to “giraffability” on them. Then it occurred to me that there was one common denominator – these websites all displayed google ads. Apparently, google advertizes my blog on websites with subjects similar to those I address in the blog. Since the ads change quite quickly (I assume), they are not displayed on the actual websites anymore, but searches still find the original locations. This explains why my investigation stranded on assumptions instead of hard evidence. I am pretty sure I am correct, though. Now all I need is to figure out whether I think this is totally awesome, or whether it just freaks me out.

The fact that anything is googlable in 2009 is both amazing – what a resource! – and scary, because it does give a sense of lack of control (science fiction is, after all, best appreciated when it remains fictional). You can find details about everyone and everything on the internet (which my friend, Galen, pointed out with a warning yesterday). Even my 86 year old grandfather – which has never been online in his life, and for whom the Internet is only a vague idea he has no desire to grasp – is googleable. I spent some time this summer looking into some family history, and in the process I stumbled across records of my grandfather’s birth, confirmation and marriage, plus a video of him speaking at a local, public event. When I showed this to him he was astonished, though I doubt it made him appreciate the Internet.

Regardless of my grandfather’s lack of conviction, the power of the Internet really is quite impressive. It makes me feel like challenging it , or rather, challenging you (ironically this challenge goes out with the help of the Internet) – is there anything left that can’t be googled? And don’t say "owiueuowihgew" or something like that (which should be googlable within short time, since I have been spreading it all over the net before finishing this sentence. Just trying to prove a point…) – I mean something real. Any takers?

On pirates (otherwise known as archivists)

Over the last few weeks I’ve spent more time than what is healthy going through documents in the National Archives at College Park, MD. I’m doing research for my master’s thesis, which is why I came to the US in the first place (the travelling and the foreign culture experience is only a bonus). In a strange way, the research is both hard work and autopilot usage at the same time.

It is tiresome to spend hours and hours each day going through documents where, sometimes, you can barely read what it says, and often even if you can read it, it’s hard to know whether or not it will be useful (my thesis is yet unwritten, after all). For documentation purposes, I photograph every single document that might come in handy. Since I hardly will be able to go back (I hear the commute between Oslo and Maryland is a total drag), I’m terrified of missing something important. So I overcompensate, and take pictures of a lot more than I need to (like newspaper clippings of the Jordanian Prince Mohammed’s engagement pictures…)

However, since I do have this security net – knowing that I’ll have all the sources I need (and more) electronically when I go back home – it allows me to pay less attention to what I am doing. It usually takes a few seconds of scanning down a document before I’ve decided whether it is of interest, and if so, I don’t continue reading. Instead I take a picture, knowing I will have access to it later. In between pictures, I have plenty of time and opportunity to look around and let the mind drift.

The archive is a pretty strange community. A lot of the researchers come there from afar (myself being the prime example), and they often have a limited time to spend there. Thus they tend to exhaust the opening hours in order to get as much done in as short amount of time as possible (myself being a really bad example – I like to come late and leave early…). This means that they very quickly become friendly with the staff (members of which are doing an excellent job). The staff is more or less permanent, of course, but they too form a strange community since they constantly must adapt to new researchers while still keeping up with the “veterans”.

Me being me, and the job being relatively mindless at times, I cannot help but creating stories for some of the people I’ve come to see almost every day. For some reason, in my mind they are all playing a part in a pirate story (I bet you wondered where the pirate part would come in, didn’t you?).

There are two pirate ships. One is captained by the fearless Italian-Shooed Joe. He has a bright and capable crew under his command – Roy the Accountant is the first mate, and other prominent crewmembers include Ezra Mousetrap, Sheila the Nymph and Fireman Carl. However, in sheer strength, this crew is no match for the shipmen of the competing pirate ship – lead by Captain Charcoal-Barrel Bill. His crew includes musclemen and –women like The Duckman, Big Al, Big-Italian-Al and Hippalong-Sally.

Now, this tale wouldn’t be complete without a few ships from the Royal British Navy chasing the pirates like rats: the Virgin is under the command of Sir Adam Noblenose, who for some reason is cooperating with a whole family of Irish nobility – Patrick the Young, Patrick the Bohemian and Patrick the Lady.

Though this is a story begging not to be written (I have a bunch of those too), it seems that one thing is clear: even when I am doing academic work, my creativity points towards writing fiction. Like a pirate’s compass pointing north (or towards what you really, really want…).