My Mate Google

More information is now available to individuals than ever before.  When I was a student in the early 1980s, you had to be a card carrying member of a library to access books and scientific articles.  Access to a book was just the start.  You had to know how to search books for information.  The good and respected authors were known amongst the peers.  It was critical to know how to formulate a question and evaluating the written work was a skill that you learnt early.  

These days we hit the web, type a few words into the html bar and expect a zillion links to information to be delivered by Google or Bing.  So we become, one and all, experts on everything we can imagine.  So we imagine.

Man is lazy, so we look at the first few hits, read the links, and make up our mind.  It is the most important links first we imagine, so it must be the truth.  It is written and published, so it must be the truth, or it must at least be of value.  This information shapes our views and influences our decisions.  Sometimes it influences decisions that should remain within the realm of the real experts, not the Google-enabled ones.

Let’s look a a real example.  Is the fluoridation of drinking water a good thing or should it be abolished?   Two camps here:  On the one hand we have those supporting it citing the good dental health of populations where fluoridation is in place, and then there is the camp saying that blanket fluoridation is mass medication with a questionable chemical compound that affects intellect, etc.  

Assume the city council runs a referendum on this topic.  How would you vote:  Yes or No for fluoridation of drinking water?  Where would you start your ‘research’  (an over-used word these days, denoting anything from asking about the views of people right down to PhD studies)?  I bet you would hit Wikipedia and Google.  Why would you go to the academic library at the University?  That is hard work and if it is really significant, it should be available on the web, not so?  Or perhaps we can just listen to the experts, those that have read the posts and articles already.  

Many dentists agree that fluoridated water has a positive effect in preventing dental decay.  They agree that too much fluoride may stain teeth.  There are also several untested theories that claim fluoride will lower intelligence, influence weight management and may increase fracturing of bones.  The problem here is that medical people have a professional view, which is offset by the perceptions of the activists, that are vocal and self-taught experts, using their friend Google to make convincing and emotional cases that will swing city councils to abandon fluoridation.  

My position is that the activists must be willing to put their money where their mouths are.  If we stop fluoridation in a community under pressure of lobby groups, they must also pay for the effects of tooth decay in that community ten years down the line, out of their own, personal pockets.  I mean, if you are convinced, do the right thing and pay up. If you have done the proper research, you should have nothing to fear.

Unfortunately Google can easily be used to scare the masses in the name of research.  Perhaps we should all work hard to ensure that research remains grounded properly.  We should also stand up to the self-informed, Google-dictated loud-mouths and insist on facts and evidence, not Google-based ‘we all know this’  crap.  

Southern Coffee Café Culture

I remember many years ago a tea shop opened in the Cape Town waterfront.  I was fascinated by the whole culture around the consumption of tea.  From the rituals in Japan, to the high teas of the Empire, it seemed that it was not only about the tea, but about a community of practices inspired by tea.  For me this was different for coffee (at least in South Africa), where coffee was synonymous with instant stuff containing chicory and who knows what else.  You added heaps of sugar to it  and you dunked rusks in it for a quick breakfast.

Back to the tea for a moment: it was interesting that the shop sold lots of tea in bags and tins, special tea cups and all sorts of paraphernalia, but it felt like just another shop.  You could not even order a cup of tea.  

I was introduced to really good coffee by my friend François Collin.  With his Brazilian-French-Moroccan something genetic make-up he obviously grew up with the real stuff.  His passion for the cultivars, the machines to grind the stuff, the making of a strong black concoction and the look of bliss when he sipped it, convinced me that there was another culture around coffee that I needed to investigate.  Easier said than done.  Only when I finally visited France on a business trip did I get to actually drink coffee (espresso style) in a café setting.  I loved it.  Just like I enjoyed getting a glass of a crisp white wine at a street café.  Why was this not available in South Africa?  Or if it was, why was it hidden away?

Then I moved to New Zealand.  Here we imagine we invented the whole art of coffee, I guess.  We are passionate about our coffee.  We drink short blacks, long blacks and flat whites.  None of the foam or cream choices, no stupid froth made from coconut waste or synthetic long fatty chains in our coffee.  Nope.  Straight stuff, from beans carefully selected by the team to represent their style, roasted and ground daily, often in the café.  Every morning early here in Dunedin you can smell the coffee being roasted and you can hear the grinding of the beans.  It is insane!  And not cheap.  I have become a long black person, with a flat white thrown in every so often.  No sugar!  

That is not all.  We have a coffee café culture I guess.  Lovely spaces built around our love of sharing a cuppa are to be found on every street and around every corner.  Soon you develop an attachment to to some of these spaces, it becomes yours to share with others.  It becomes a space where you meet to talk about work, or share ideas, to get work done, to meet lots of people, to mingle and some days, a space to roll up into to just sit and reflect.  Quietly, with just the grinding and stamping of the coffee going on in the background and the southern weather outside blowing people in and grabbing them by their coats as they leave again.  

I have my spot in Dunedin now.  Diesoline is open from around eight in the morning to two in the afternoon weekdays.  It plays great modern music, often New Zealand artists.  It has an ebb and flow of people as the hours are chimed off by the big bell in the Octagon around the corner.  This is where I meet people for all sorts of discussions.  Ian works upstairs.  He is the owner of The Logic Studio, an innovative software and services company.  The old heritage building in the small back street is owned by Luke, who also works upstairs at his company called BrandAid.  And downstairs is Diesoline, owned by Luke and Tania.    Tania knows us all.  She knows what we typically order.  Sometimes she builds a fire in the fireplace and the old building, with its modern design  signature, comes to life with a warmth that takes you back in time.  Its heart beats to the rhythms of the South: layers of dark clothes, open, friendly faces, the smell of exotic coffee beans, crisp air and some days a ridiculously dark blue sky that brings the eternity of space right to the door of your soul.