For the record, I’m not directing this post at you, Levi.

See, Levi’s one of the cast members in this top-secret film shoot that 9art photography & I are producing. Poor guy drew the short straw and had to wake before dawn with me to do a sunrise shoot. As bribery, I offered to make biscuits and gravy. I messaged everyone, “Can someone give me their recipe or show me how to make gravy from scratch? Because I have no clue.”

Levi said, in classic form:

“Let me google that for you.“

I fell for it yet again and was directed (as many of you were) to this site:

…which proceeded to automate a Google search.

Yes, it was hilarious.

And yet, I still don’t know how to make good gravy for biscuits and gravy.

Like I said at the outset, I’m not directing this at Levi. In fact, I’m glad Levi made light of the situation, made me laugh about Googling enough to free me to share what’s on my heart…

For some time, I’ve noticed this trend getting worse and worse. I’ll text seven different guys about their opinion on an issue and every single one either scoffs or texts a variation of “Google it,” or “check Wikipedia.” What if I’m checking Wikipedia for theology in film? All they give me is a further reading list. What if their list is bad? I think I’d rather have a conversation with my friend Doug about film and theology than the internet. Besides, Doug wouldn’t let me down. The internet might.

There’s a problem here, a type of bad thinking, some sort of modern fallacy.

That fallacy goes, “the information exists for free, so why should I waste my time telling you what’s out there for free?” Never mind my aversion to the “time is money” lie, let’s just deal with raw information verses refined information.

And we’ll take an example from steel.

See if you’re a blacksmith in the world of Morrowwind, and you’re making yourself a dai-katana, you don’t stop with raw iron. If you were to cross your mere iron katana with a Hattori Hanzo, your blade’s getting cut in half. Hands down. Not only has Hanzo refined his blade from iron into steel, but he has folded that steel hundreds of times until it rings with strength. First he refines the iron in the fire, then he takes the steel and strengthens and sharpens it by hammer and anvil.

A wise guy once said, “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

The battle between human conversation and Google searches falls under that wisdom.

Don’t get me wrong, interaction on the internet does contribute something unique to our lives, especially when you consider the power of public domain and open source. I even think Wikipedia holds value for many professional realms including academia. However, if I’m forced to chose between information for a given craft pasted on some random high-traffic web page and information digested by a human being that knows, cares, and has lasting experience in said craft, I will choose the personal interaction every time.

There’s this Neil Gaiman quote:

“Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one.”

Gaiman knows that professional authors and filmmakers use reference librarians all the time. Not only can reference librarians find you obscure texts through the interlibrary loan (the single most underused tool at your local library), they also know how to quickly find answers to ridiculous questions like “When did fairies first shrink and don dragonfly wings?” or “What are the best books on foraging for your supper?”

This goes tenfold for people who invest their lives in a specific craft, which is one more reason I don’t ask Google, but the experts. If I want to know about Medievalism, I’ll ask my Medievalist friend long before Google. If I want to know about Arabic, I’ll ask an Arab long before Google Translate. Are those tools useful? Yes, but only as introductions and supplements. The real goods comes not from the net, but the man.

I love Google as much as the next guy, but let’s be honest, it’s not like a search engine trumps a human. Attachment to your iPhone cannot compare to communion with your neighbor. One looks like addiction, the other like love. In fact, the former may very well be an addiction, as indicated by the new boom in smartphone rehab.

Like I said, Levi wasn’t implying all of that, he was just being funny. His joke, however, did me the courtesy of resurfacing that deeper problem — a gaping hole in the assumptions of our age: we think that the language of information trumps the language of intimacy. Google logs the metaphors and grammars that we have created. Poetry — the language of intimate relationships, of baby coos and weeping grandfathers, and, of course, prayer — does something different. She creates new grammars and metaphor.

To close, a story…

Monday night, I stayed up until two in the morning talking to a friend. I plugged in my phone thrice. In the middle of our epic catch-up, my friend started categorizing different types of geniuses and suddenly invented this brilliant word “meantness.” He used meantness to represent a person’s role in history and society. “Bilbo was meant to find the ring, Frodo, which also means that you were meant to find it.”  Meantness was a beautiful word, a perfect word in the midst of our deep conversation, a word the both of us will use for years to come.

I just Googled “meantness” and came up empty-handed in the midst of 23,400,000 results.

“But Lance! That’s not even fair! It’s a made-up word between you and your friend!”

Exactly. My point exactly…