Get off my duff? Forget it.

The strangest thing about the web is that I no longer have to look for things. I can just Google them up quicker than I can locate them myself. When I wanted to know the guide number for my ancient Vivitar 215 flash, instead of spending an hour looking through my boxes of equipment stored about the house to find the original manual, I was able to find a scan of the manual online using Google. When I had a question about my camera, the manual was sitting five feet from me on the shelf, but I decided to Google for it. In less time and effort than getting off my duff and tugging it out of my bookshelf, I had the PDF file from the camera manufacturer's site open in my browser.

I even had the PDF file on my local hard disk, but it was lost among the ten thousands PDF file's I've downloaded over the years. So it was quicker to stay in my browser and use the power of Google search to find the manual than to use the obsolete and clunky interface to my information the Windows Explorer offers. This is a new age dawning. There is something significant in this. I just don't know where its going.

It is more efficient, easier and simpler for me to find a manual by finding its Doppelganger halfway around the world through thousands of miles of telephone and network connections, routers and gateways than it is to look in a box ten feet away from me in the closet for the original dead trees version.

Stranger, is that I don't have to worry that my ancient manual won't be there. I can rely on the assumption that if I am interested in it, someone, somewhere out there has taken the time to scan it and float it onto the network. And it is there. Just Google for a Vivitar 215 flash. What does it mean when I can rely on a "smart mob" acting just like me to ensure whatever I want or need will be at my fingertips because I know our needs are similar?