Whatever did we do before Google?

Sitting here in the cafe, working on my research, I've had the opportunity to chat with a couple of different strangers here. One woman came in with her two sons, obviously lost. She was looking for an address in the neighboring town, and she and the barista were unable to figure it out from the phone book.

Easy solution--I google'd the place, and then google-mapped directions to it from the cafe, all in less than a minute. So here I am able to give directions to a place I'd never even heard of before in a different town, courtesy of Google's information repository.

Before coming out to Pennsylvania, too, I had scoped out all my bus routes, my commute to work, my shopping from Seattle--I'm trying to remember how much trouble being in an unfamiliar new place used to be pre-Google. Mercifully, I seem to have forgotten.

I first came across the name "google" in one of the great books of my childhood, Mathematics and the Imagination. If I can get a copy from the library, that would be worth reviewing, after I finish the reviews currently in progress.