Googled intelligence

• Newspaper section: News

Cn blue. the star 6. facebook. red shirt havoc. news on floods. ipad. zee. son of an angel. sae daeng. ilovekamikaze. justin bieber.

Search and you shall find - no, just type type type, case-insensitive, and you shall find.

Through Google, our collective obsessions, curiosity, whims, inquiries, snooping, interests, virtual expeditions and armchair investigations are readily documented as they leave trails of indelible digital vapour.

The top 2010 search terms from Thailand, reported by Google this week, reveal that in the year of May-hem and celebrity cuckoldings, of tragic floods and crumbling democracy, the Thai life hasn't been that hopeless since we still go after Korean boy bands, Apple marvels, singing tournaments, time-murdering YouTube clips and football fixtures.

We wouldn't go as far as those proponents of Geekdom, who divine that Google search lays bare the soul of the universe, the zeitgeist, the desires we channel into that obedient search box.

But certainly, the results can be eye-opening, considering that for many, young and old, Google = Knowledge and Googling = Education, fast and free.

We've come a long way from Borges's imagined Library of Babel, the cosmos of hexagonal shelves where books represent infinity in a dizzying labyrinth of form, mathematics and metaphysics.

The hypertext of the Web era allows us to live in a cross-referential library, where every piece of knowledge is second-hand, reproduced, re-reproduced, fast-obtained and faster-forgotten. Recently, a young reporter asked me: "From which website do you normally get your story? Tell me how do you Google it?."

Legs, my girl, I still have legs. Even the WikiLeaks people go out to obtain their leaks, sometimes.

I was mortified for not knowing "CN Blue", the top search term from Thailand in the personality section. To learn about it, naturally I Googled it!

How convenient, how proud - now I can even write a 1,200-word story about this up and coming Korean band and the amount of attention devoted to them by Thai groupies, this despite the fact that I still can't distinguish one CN Blue member from the other or dismiss the premonition that they might be a product of a computer-generated hallucination. Lustrous, they are.

The second most searched term in this section is "Zee", an equally lustrous Thai songster who, I swear, looks frighteningly similar to a CN Blue singer, though I'm still not sure which one.

South Korea may be going through a rough patch with its northern relative; it may be going through an identity crisis of its new status as a developed nation - but in terms of pop-influence and hairstyle, Google search shows us that its firm grip over Southeast Asian youths is nothing but complete. Even Justin Bieber - the Justin Bieber, Canada's pride - comes in fourth in the ranking.

In the news category, politics and disaster dominate the minds of Thai Googlers, meaning all of us. The top term is "satanakarn sua daeng" (Red Shirt situation), followed by "khao nam tuam" (news about floods) and "ja pian", or Sarge Pian, a southern policeman killed in action. The more graphic terms, "arisman nhee" (Arisman flees, apparently referring to his Spider-Man stunt abseiling down the side of a hotel) and "central world talom" (Central World collapses) rank 6th and 9th respectively. "Seh Daeng", the military firebrand whose death in May remains unresolved - and outrageously un-investigated - comes in fifth.

In the "fastest-rising" division, the second on the list is iPad, but the topper clearly shows that the internet is no longer just a tool (or toy) for urbanites and Bangkok-centric tastemakers: the top search term is pleng luk tevada (literally "son of a divine being"), the name of a country song sung in a juicy south-northeastern dialect - the Thai version is actually adapted from a Khmer original.

So, on Google's top hits, we have on the one hand Zee, an echo of the Korean craze, then we have this regional number lifted from a Cambodian chart. The Thai zeitgeist is laid bare for all.

Yet Google clearly doesn't equal education; perhaps it equals information, untrustworthy at times. The search words do not tell us about what we have known, or learnt, in the past year; they only show what passes through our minds, sometimes in a flash that disappears right after the search results return in 0.04 seconds.

Knowledge on demand is not knowledge at all, and instant intelligence is ignorance in disguise. Let's go on and Google away, but I'll try to keep that in mind.

Start with Ilovekamikaze. No idea? Go Googling.