Google has become ubiquitous in our lives for its abilities to give us answers. Not necessarily the right answers, but a great many of them from which to choose. Less is spoken of my favorite new use for google: generating questions, a practice I have dubbed Exquisite Google after the surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse in which words are assembled collectively in a way which no one person could have done on his own.
When you begin to type anything into the Google Search box, Google will magically attempt to finish your question or sentence for you by giving you a list of options to click on based on the most popular searches requested that begin with the words you have typed. Try typing 'why' into the Google Search box. A list of questions from which to choose that stem from the 'why' will appear on your Google screen. If you are seeing the same list that was generated for me, then you might notice the forth, and my favorite 'why' on the list: 'why can't I own a canadian.' I'd like to know the answer to that one as well.
You can run through the whole assortment of who, what, why, where, when and for further amusement move on to typing in your friend's names and 'is' (as in 'john is').
Exquisite Google is limited only by your ability to generate the beginnings of questions and phrases.
Let the games begin.
Footnote: I should tip my hat to Graham Norton, the BBC talkshow host, who first introduced me to what I have named Exquisite Google.
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