progress of the monsoon, to
the cricket score, to the reverse
repo rate (if you do swing that
way), to your own current loca-
tion! So out goes Google Search,
which used to be a revolution before
algo-rigging and AdSense and all
that. Out goes Gmail. Phew! There
goes your Android phone! And all the
little apps you keep downloading on
Google Play. Out goes YouTube! And no
Google Maps! Going back to 1995 is
alm ost as radical as time-travelling to 1595.
The rest of the frills— Google Duo, Google
Pay, the voice search, Google Assistant—are
yet to become indispensable, while making
serious incursions on our time and mindspace.
Those who type in Indian languages, for
instance, do not type anymore—the keyboards
were always a mess. Now they speak to the
phone, and Google’s speech recognition soft-
ware does the hard yards.
So how does day one go? You wake up and
glance at your mobile...what, no notifications! It’s
a dumbphone. An hour late to office, because no
Yankee girl told you via satellite that Hosur Road
was chock-a-block. Your boss calls you and says
something that sounds “exasperating farrago of
distortions....” You can’t even Google that! There’s
a short news piece online on how Virat Kohli ges-
tured to Steve Smith, another on Piggy Chops and
Nick Jonas’s beach photographs. But, alas, no
video, no photo.... Fingers itch for a search engine.
It’s 1 pm, lunch time. Zomato’s delivery boy gets
lost...no Maps, remember?F course, Google Search was a god-
send. Aditi Verma, a 27-year-old who
works in Bank of America, says it’s
her first-hand info-guide and she
doesn’t know any other search engine. “There
are many things you don’t want to talk to your
parents about, or family, friends or colleagues.
Google fills in. Studies, jobs, relationships,
puberty, sex...Google takes you wherever you
want. It doesn’t ask you questions nor judges
you like people.” What would she do if Google
vanishes one day? Aditi laughs: “Good idea,
Google should experiment. One day it should
switch off its products all over the world, let’s
see what chaos follows.” She would just binge on
food and TV that day. “What a relief it will be!”I deal with many peculiar cases every
day, but the ones that amuse me are the
‘Google patients’. That’s not the name of
a novel psychological condition; they are
the ones who consult me after googling
their symptoms, armed with prognoses
and diagnoses. Sometimes they are
right and often not. But I do enjoy these
interactions. Google is the first point of
reference for medical conditions today.
Many people upload their experiences
and videos online. But the problem is
that internet searches do not present an
accurate answer, which causes confusion
and unnecessary anxiety.
It takes extra time to convince people
when they come with preconceived notions
based on online searches. However, it has
emboldened patients and their families as
it helps them be mentally prepared before
an appointment. Whenever I come across
anything new, I first search it online and
then consult a WhatsApp group of doctors.
The reference books that graced the tables
of doctors until
the 1990s have
now been replaced
with a laptop or
desktop; the books have
been consigned to libraries.
Way back in the 1970s, when I
returned to India to start my practice,
I would first consult my colleagues or call
up an expert in case of a doubt. Google
has made the dissemination of medical
facts and breakthroughs instantaneous.
Moreover, there is a plethora of visuals—a
luxury in the 1970s and ’80s. While Google
has helped the medical fraternity double
check hunches and facts, there should
be filters on the information that search
results throw up. O
(As told to Jyotika Sood)Naresh Trehan
Cardiologist
Those who
type in Indian
languages do
not type
anymore.
They speak
to the phone,
and Google
does the
hard yards.22 July 2019 OUTLOOK 33