The First Search

A couple hours ago, I taught a young woman from my community how to send emails and attach pictures with them. She is helping her mother, an artisan, send pictures of her work to some volunteers in the U.S. that want to help them sell their products on websites like etsy and tenthousandvillages. She knew how to type and generally use a computer, but she had never used the internet. While waiting for pictures to load as attachments, I helped her open a Facebook page, showed her YouTube, and the power of Google searches.

I opened Google and told her that she could find, literally, ANYTHING that she wanted. I said, "Think of anything you want to know about or see and you can search for it right here." Daunting proposal. She thought for about a minute and then searched for 'World's Biggest Animals.' The image results page appeared and her eyes popped and she was momentarily stunned. Then she began surfing. The surfing didn't lead anywhere too crazy, mostly because I intercepted her to finish our attaching work. When we finished, I paid for one more hour of internet time and left her there to explore.

My friend who did the Peace Corps in Honduras similarly introduced some young men in his site to the internet. Their first search? 'Girls with big boobs.'

That's all I have to say.