I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
As culture flows along a myriad channels, it's not easy for observers to discern what presses our buttons anymore. We know that Coronation Street has just overtaken Only Fools and Horses as the biggest single draw on terrestrial television, but mass audiences, on the whole, are dwindling.
Help, however, may be at hand. The busiest Internet search engine, Google, now compiles a list - 'the Zeitgeist' - of the most popular words or phrases researched on the World Wide Web.
Admittedly, this poll is exclusive to computer users, and so excludes all who can't afford or be bothered with the virtual life; but Google still recorded 55 billion 'hits' in 2003, offering a not insignificant record of what Joe and Joanne Public are searching for.
In its main, 'popular queries' category, the most requested word or phrase was - believe it or not - Britney Spears. Although she's not meant to be as cool as Christina or Pink anymore, she's still got the highest Net value of them all.
Second was Harry Potter, and third, the Matrix. Fifth - and these are 'global' results - David Beckham. Iraq only makes seventh place.
Google also records the most sought after brands on the Net, which was topped this year by Ferrari. Both Britney and Ferrari perhaps symbolise, in their different ways, those things that many of us desire, but know we can't have. Technology 'liberates' us to live in our own private fantasy realms like never before.
The Internet still promises much in terms of the free flow of ideas and information around the world. Born of the Californian hippy counter-culture, it retains its potential for radicalism and free expression. Yet it seems we're not always that quick to get beyond its skin-deep surface.
Britney clearly wasn't the most significant global figure of 2003. Was she? But in sitting pretty at number one, she's telling us something about ourselves. It's our job to ask what that is, and whether it matters.
Philippians 4.8 might help us begin to respond creatively; in trying to focus more on whatever's true, noble, right, pure and lovely, it's less, perhaps, a matter of curbing lust as increasing our desire for real, radical life.
In the meantime, one quick google and you can find out exactly what Britney wore at her 5.30am wedding in Las Vegas this week...
Oops. I did it again.
Brian Draper
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.
