You know the situation. Someone has told you something you want to know more about and within a few minutes you have gotten yourself up to speed on it. You did it through the use of the Internet. A combination of search engines and helpful websites have educated you on that topic.

You are an information god. And having been an information god for so long you begin to notice that you simply know more about a wide range of issues than virtually anyone else. When an information god wants to know how much money they need for a down payment on a house, they quickly find tools on the net to do the calculations. When an information god wants to know more on some political topic they can scan blogs to find what the consensus is and find out information not found in the general media. When an information god wants to know the lowest price on something, they know how to find it on the net quickly and effectively. When an information god wants to know more about an illness or a medication, they know how to find not only the official details on a given drug and documented treatments but individual experiences from around the world to form an educated opinion on what to do.

An information god feels both very social and isolated at the same time. It’s social in that they communicate with hundreds if not thousands of people from all over the world. If they want to talk about the finer points of the American civil war, they can talk about it with amongst the most educated and knowledgeable people on that topic around. But they don’t get to talk to them face to face, it’s all by computer. And it’s isolating because it becomes increasingly tedious to have meangingful discussions with information mortals face to face.

It’s like playing a sport or a video game with someone who’s never played. Information gods rarely debate things like abortion: “Yes, I will say this and now you will say this to which I will say this and then you will say this but then I’ll say this..” Information gods already know the whole drill, they’ve seen it thousands of times for many years. Having a political discussion is equally problematic because you already know the issues involved and quite likely all the other points of view and it’s pointless to try to get an information mortal up to speed. “Bush should have finished Saddam off when he had the chance…” “Well no, it’s not quite so simple, you see the UN resoltuions….oh what’s the point.”

As time goes on, information gods not only become increasingly knowledgeable on a wide range of things, but they get better and more efficient at finding out new things. And they become very effective at sifting through the bullshit and the real information that is on the net.

Not feeling well? An information god is apt to quickly narrow down what they most likely have, find prescribed treatments and then decide whether it’s worth going to the doctor to have them prescribe the medicine you have already determined you need or whether it’s just quicker (and cheaper) to order what you need on-line. An old high school friend exagerrates their success in an email? An information god pulls up where they live and then gets a recent satellite photo of their house down to seeing the exact trailer they’re in. Someone trying to sell you magazine subscriptions over the phone for a “great price”? The information god, armed with his wireless internet connection quickly finds the going rate on magazine subscriptions and then finds out how to effectively block future telemarketers from calling. Your yard getting some dead patches? The information god can (without any prior knowledge about yard care) find out the problem (grubs) and the cheapest most effective solution for them within minutes. Have a friend learning French? An information god can quickly take anything needed and translate to and from French (and even knows how to word it so that it is translated properly).

And so it goes on.

The gap between information gods and information mortals grows wider every day. The tools for gathering information gets better. The amount of data available grows. And the experience they have in finding it and using it increases. It almost makes you wonder what life will be like in a decade or so when the information gods are armed with wireless connections that go off of voice recognition to find and retrieve information. When those devices are able to whisper right into their ears the information they need on demand, any time, anywhere. There truly will be gods walking amongst men.

Brad Wardell