Google Trends

Google says it can now detect flu outbreaks as they're breaking. Last week, the search engine unveiled a site that graphs flu queries. According to Google, people tend to run flu searches when their circle of family and friends begins to experience symptoms. Surges in flu searches can serve as an early warning system. Last season, Google detected an outbreak about two weeks before the Centers for Disease Control made its announcement.

On the one hand, Google's new flu detection site appears to be a great public service. Much like NORAD tracking the flight path of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Actually, if we're looking at flu activity in our own state, it's probably more like watching the BLOB swallow the town theater. There's little more to do, but cover your eyes and scream.

Now conspiracy theorists may take issue with the notion that Google has mined data from personal Internet searches. But the greater concern might be that we have been offered another reason to waste time on the Internet. Online users will bookmark it. Check it everyday. Maybe even personalize their web page with a graphic showing their state gradually slumping over in a feverish, achy, mucus-filled clump-- wrapped in a quilt.

As for me, it's bad enough I'm wasting time blogging, but now I'm going to experience this daily sense of urgency to check this site, if for no other reason, to see if it's too late to get a flu shot. And once I'm on this Google site, who knows if I'll be baited by the hyperlinked topics that are lurking in the tall grass, waiting to sucker me into visiting another web site, which will surely lead me into a hallucinogenic tumble down a nested egg-like escapade through the World Wide Web. How many degrees of separation is this Flu Trends site from one that offers say a recipe for tuna casserole? And while meandering through the web, will I learn the middle name of Joaquin Phoenix? Or find a fare to Mexico City for under $400 without having to fly out of Philadelphia?

In one survey, workers say the Internet is their top distraction. This of course, is neither a surprise nor cause for national alarm. Slacking is the new national pastime. And it has surpassed finger football in popularity among all workplace spectator events, although I have no supporting data. As a nation, we have come to revel in this shared tendency to have our attention easily diverted (check out these great Internet activities). It's called the LOOK AT THE MONKEY syndrome. Let's say there's something really important happening, over here. Perhaps it's famine, genocide, a virus that's spreading rapidly from continent to continent, but... LOOK AT THE MONKEY. Over there! He's so funny! And cute too! Is he always doing that?

Still, I applaud Google for its effort in the name of public health. I hope it continues such efforts on behalf of the public good. Perhaps it can analyze search data to anticipate future trends that one might deem detrimental to our collective security, conscience, and good taste. Who knows? If Google had been on the ball earlier, fashion fads from the 1980s might not have been able to make a successful comeback. Just imagine, as searches for 80s fashion tips had begun to spike, local law enforcement officials and members of Homeland Security could have rushed in, armed with Google data and search warrants (maybe not so much the warrants), to prevent this unholy and unsavory resurrection. Wishful thinking.

Still, it's not too late for Google to do some good. America can't be saved from the return of the 80s, but there's a developing nation out there somewhere whose streets are about to be flooded with spandex, leg warmers, and mullets. Maybe as a nation, we can't help ourselves, but we can do the decent thing and spare a nation like Guatemala the indignities of 1980s American pop culture.

Google. Please. For Guatemala.