Knowing everything
I once spent a few days being troubled by a childhood mystery.
I could not remember the name of the little robot on the Buck Rogers television show?
I used to watch the program and seemed to remember that he bee-bopped around repeating his own name over and over and over. I asked a few people and they couldn’t remember the name either, until eventually someone recalled that the little silver guy would say “Biggy, Biggy, Biggy” as he walked around.
And just like that, the mystery was solved. His name was Biggy. Except – it wasn’t. That information was incorrect.
This question bounced around in my noggin pre-internet. Obviously.
If this question had entered my mind now, I would just take out my phone and search for the answers. If I had been able to do that, I would have know that the robots name was not Biggy.
In fact, spoiler alert, he wasn’t even saying “Biggy, Biggy, Biggy” – he was saying “Bidi, Bidi, Bidi.”
Double spoiler – Bidi wasn’t his name either. It was Twicki. The character was voiced by Mel Blanc.
Comedian Pete Holmes does a bit about how people today have the ability to know everything, but it doesn’t actually make us more intelligent. He equates having a smartphone to having a drunk know-it-all in you pocket that can blurt out the answer to any question.
Holmes reflected on a time when a question such as “where is Tom Petty from” could not be answered easily. The information would not have been anywhere readily at hand, even in a encyclopedia. Holmes said the only way to find the answer to such questions would be to ask other people, meaning that they would also be burdened with a lingering question.
He said situations like this would eventually conclude when Tom Petty fan could actually answer the question (Gainesville, Florida) and then a rush of relief and satisfaction would wash over you.
People who can’t recall a world before smartphones will never know the anxiety or relief of these situations.
They will never see an actress in a movie, recall she was in another film, but struggle to figure out which one.
They will never know the pain of not being able to remember who sang Afternoon Delight (Starland Vocal Band).
They will never wonder who led the NFL in receiving in 1980 (John Jefferson).
They can immediately find the answer if wondering which state is larger between North Dakota and South Dakota (South Dakota is about 6,300 square miles larger).
The point is, people will never be plagued by those ridiculous questions that used to get clogged in your mind. Questions that weren’t important enough warrant an exhaustive search, perhaps at a library or through targeted phone calls. Such questions used to be a part of everyday life, but not anymore.
Because the answers to all things are readily at hand, the need to simply memorize information is diminished. Schools know this and that is why their focus now is on teaching children to problem solve and reason, rather than memorize state capitals and multiplication tables.
But perhaps the biggest advantage of having so much information at our fingertips is that it eliminates the most annoying member of any pre-internet gathering – the guy who knew the name of Buck Rogers’ robot (or some other nugget of trivia) but refused to tell the rest of the group.
Few phrases were as annoying as “I know, but I’m not going to tell you” back in those days.
-Chad Williamson is the managing editor at the Journal-Tribune.