01 Jun #NoSearch: Two Months, One Experiment, Zero Search Engines…

Ask yourself a question: how long could you go without using an internet search engine? It occurred to me a few weeks back that the internet has become such an integral and vital part of everyday life that we no longer consider how much, why or how we use it. Want to find out about a product? Google it. Need directions? Google it. Want to know what time a movie’s on? Google it. The web has 25 billion indexed pages, and in order to make sense of it, we’ve become totally reliant on search engines.

Think about it: how often to you search the web? Five times per day? Ten times per day? Twenty? Well, for the next two months I’m going to try not to use a search engine. At all. Instead, I’m going to depend on my friends, colleagues and online networks to find out the things I need to know. Want to find out about a product? Ask my friends. Need directions? Call someone. Want to know what time a movie’s on? Use an app.

#NoSearch is an experiment into the power or social networks and collective intelligence. I’m under no illusions that it’s going to be easy. I don’t even know if it’s possible to go two days without using search engines given the fact that I work in digital media, let alone two months. But I’m going to give it a shot in the hope that I’ll uncover some real insight into the power of Google.

And I need your help. I’ve set up the #NoSearch Posterous blog with more detail on the idea and the rules I’ve got to stick by, and I’ll be recording developments as I go, both positive and negative. Please subscribe! But more than that, please follow @No_Search on Twitter and/or become my friend on Facebook and/or follow me on Quora. I’m going to be asking lots of questions and relying on my network to help me out. Please get involved.

And if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them…

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