Featured, On Campus - by Lily Q on Tuesday, February 3, 2009 22:22 - 18 Comments - 64 views
I may have been wrong.
Ten minutes ago, I began a Mushon-mandated Week Without Google. The admittedly unexpected project demands that the class steer clear of not only Google search, but every single Google-operated site and service there is. That means no Google Blogger, no Google Maps, no Google Calendar and, perhaps most horrifyingly, I’ll have to find another way to shamelessly waste time because YouTube’s not an option.
I initially dismissed the idea that I could possibly live without my Gmail, blog and various Google Sites as an insane suggestion akin to recommending that I spend a week drinking my own urine. But the immediate response the project provoked in me– a brewing mental diatribe about Google’s many essential merits–was enough to cause a few quickly stifled pangs of nervousness about my level of dependence on the company’s army of helpful applications.
So here I am, ten minutes in and just a little bit terrified. I’ve switched all my email to our glitch-prone NYU server and my Blogger bookmark is at the very end of the bookmark bar, not even visible unless I expand the Firefox screen to its full, inconvenient capacity. Even the tiny, telling “G” that used to sit next to my search box has been switched to an aggressive Yahoo “Y!”
I’ll be checking in throughout the week, reporting on the as yet unknown difficulties of life without a single home for my color coded calendars, aggregated blog posts and emails that file themselves. “Have we become too dependent on Google?” asked CMS Watch analyst Kas Thomas. Well, I’ll soon see.
Photo: Flickr courtesy of Mykl Roventine.
18 Comments
I already failed at this because I blogged (via the Blogger platform, affiliated with Google) on Jess and Josh. I CAN’T DEPRIVE MY READERS OF ME FOR A WEEK. (They would not mind. At all.) You are going to win that nonexistent medal he offered.
Facebook User
Yeah, Jess was telling me about this.
I…don’t get it. Well, I get his point–Google is a huge corporation and have we become too reliant upon it and the Internet is vast and there are many tools at our disposal–but the fact is that Google plays a HUGE part in our modern use of the Internet, especially in terms of social media, and purposely not using any Google-related services is both dogmatic and counterproductive.
Yes, Google is scary-big, but it’s also scary-convenient. On top of all that, this project also seems a bit unfair to students who may use Google-related software for other classes. Your professor seems to be asking a lot of his students for a dubious cause.
Yahoo is so 2001. Good luck.
Josh Becker
by the way the “facebook user” is me, josh becker, and I don’t know why all my comments on this site are stuck in facebook mode.
A project demanding a week without Google? Cruel and unusual punishment.
Jim O'Grady
I hear there is information in books. You might try them.
If you keep spreading these rumors Jim, I’m going to have to block your IP address.
Lily Q
The next– and more horrifying!– challenge: A Week WITH Books.
No Kindles allowed during the week without books!
Josh Becker
Jim, you’re all too right. But it’s worth noting that you made your comment on a blog post, as in, nobody here is devaluing the informational value of books, but email is email is Gmail.
Michael Narkunski
Ahh, I love this. Not one hour ago, I was bitching about how the answer for goddamn everything is “look it up online.” I was trying to figure out how to do the optical illusion in some random McSweeny’s book I had, where there were eye-holes cut out of the front and back flaps and you can fold them together and look through them. I couldn’t figure it out, and my roommate said to just look it up online. I refused, and a few minutes later saw the 3-D hippoppotamus.
Also, in high school, I had an English teacher who made us go a week without electricity… I think you can handle no Google.
em are veeee
Facebook User you are definitively “hot.”
Cooper Cheatham
Jessica,
As I have told you numerous times on your facebook, it won’t be that difficult.
Josh,
Just because google is convenient, doesn’t mean that the teacher is depriving the students from other classes. There are so many other alternatives to Google products. It’s the internet, and Google does control all of the internet.
MIND OVER MATTER!
Week Without Google: Day 1 | NYU Local
[...] than the one you’ll encounter in the first few minutes of the morning– remembered my Google-free oath of the night before. It was kind of like waking up a little drunk next to some really hairy guy and [...]
WSN Roundup 2/5/09 | NYU Local
[...] show Lily this during her week-long hiatus from [...]
More Like Five Days Without Google | NYU Local
[...] less than two days to go in the epic undertaking that was A Week Without Google, I’ve folded. While I could lament my lack of self control or take this opportunity to pose [...]
Fucking School Part Two « Jess and Josh Talk About Stuff
[...] School Part Two By jessroy My homework for my new media class, as Lily discusses here, is to not use Google or any of its programs for a week. (YouTube, Gmail, [...]
Haha. Wow. Good luck with that. Looking forward to see what you have to write.