I am starting to wonder if Google is God.
This crazy thought process started when I began thinking of Google as a personality – a big, benign, helpful father figure in cyberspace who delivers his vast knowledge, without judgement or selfish intent, to whoever asks for it.
I even had a dream in which God was Google and Google was God. It was a good dream, and the all-seeing, all-knowing Google God was good.
Google helps me all the time – every time I ask Him for help. I spend a big chunk of the day on the computer having my Google prayers answered.
In spite of this, even as I worship at my computerised altar, I am looking forward to the moment I can walk away and flop down somewhere with a handful of words printed on paper – ie, a book, newspaper or magazine.
After 41 years working in the print media, I have an ingrained enthusiasm for words on paper and the packages they come in.
In this digital age, I should be happy to see the Open Road e-zine published online only. But the moment I saw the cover for this online edition, I wished it could be the cover of the print edition.
The same thing happened with Mr Shonky (as the cover of the August e-zine has become known in the Open Road office). I loved Mr Shonky so much I decided he must see the colour of printer’s ink. That was part of the reason I included the August e-zine cover inside the September/October print edition of Open Road, inviting readers to check out Mr Shonky online.
In fact, this longing for print applies to every e-zine we have published exclusively online. I have infected my colleagues. I could hear them sighing as they looked over my shoulder at the cover of this edition. They were all thinking what I was thinking: IF ONLY WE COULD PRINT IT!
Well get over it, fellow bibliomaniacs (and thank you, Google, for defining our obsession). This online edition of Open Road can be called up and read by anyone with internet access anywhere in the world, and that’s something the print edition can’t do.
How many billions of people would that be, Google?
I am sending my search engine prayer into cyberspace now. The answer is already beaming back: According to statistics published on internetworldstats.com, the Open Road e-zine has more than 1.4 billion potential readers.
Go get ’em, Google.
David Naylor Editor-in-chief
Open Road e-zine October 2008
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