The other night I heard from an old friend.  A blog-friend that has disappeared off of the internet, and  who I feared was gone forever.  He sent me an e-mail, and after a few turns of e-mail he told me he wanted to voice-talk.

So we got the Skype going, and just chatted.  It was a fun conversation that leapt from tree to tree…politics, science, literature, childhood stories,  exotic weaponry, etc.

I don’t remember when I informed him that I was using Google.  I think it was something to do with the latest research showing that people who are HIV-resistant have resistance to other diseases endemic to the human population. ..but he stopped dead.

“That is so cool!”

“um…it’s what I do.”

I was a little non-plussed, because actually, I was using Google as a brain-augmentation to keep up with him.  People who know me have been known to say that I remember everything I read.

That’s not true.  I remember bits and pieces and drips and drabs of everything I read with vivid clarity.  Enough to remember it when I am in a conversation and then want to use it, but not with enough completeness to have it actually be useful if challenged or queried.  Google is my friend.  I remember enough of something to craft a good search term, and Google and skimming ability provide the rest.

Anyway.

My friend thought it was enormously cool that here I was, sitting there, Googling our conversation topics, hunting down facts for clarity and accuracy and to add to the conversation.  Sort of a mind-meld cooperative grok session.

I had to stop and realized that it WAS enormously cool.  See,  I have other friends that I do this with.  Karen and I will sometimes (when we have time at the same time) have what I shall now dub “multi-media conversations” that include phone, e-mail, Google searches, etc.   Before I dropped IM, we used to have that as well.

Our friend Eric and I will sometimes spend an hour or so on the phone with household tasks running in the back ground and Google at the ready.

But the coolness of it had sort of slipped my mind due to the habitual nature.

Its true.  Its cool.  The feeling of talking to someone and being able to really tear into a subject…even if it is a frivolous one.  To chase down a fact and e-mail the URL to someone rather than just say “I read it somewhere”.  It adds a dimension and flavor and intensity to conversation that you can’t get any other way.

‘course, some people are annoyed by it:

“Why can’t we just talk”?

I suppose the intensity can begin to feel more like a data-download than a pass-time, but I guess that’s also what makes it so cool.

Most people don’t do it that way.  Most people don’t like that sort of thing, and I suppose that it might not even occur to many people to have a conversation that way.

You know, that really IS cool.