Number Crunch

No longer content to simply derail us using mini video games made into the shape of their logo, yesterday Google introduced its latest creation designed to bring workplace productivity to a halt when it unveiled the "Bacon Number" search option. Based on the classic movie nerd game "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon", which claims that all actors can be linked to movie star Kevin Bacon in less than 6 steps due to the number of films he has appeared in, this feature allows users to find out the most direct route from any actor in history to Kevin Bacon. All one has to do is go to Google, enter the actor's name followed by the words "bacon number", hit search and the above the normal result you would get for that actor Google will show you how quickly that person can be traced to Kevin Bacon. (There was another site which has been able to do this for years, but apparently Google is trying to set it up so that theirs is the only website you need in your life.) This new program makes it incredibly easy to get your answer and it also shows you connections from movies you probably never knew about. That's probably why I'm not a fan.

The internet has long been a place for people to finds cheat codes to help them beat video games but even those are only supposed to make it easier, not actually finish the game for you. With this program not only will it give you an answer but it will do so providing links you may have previously been unaware of. It's the second part where I take exception. For example, if I wanted to link Alfred Hitchcock to Kevin Bacon I would only be able to use about 7 of Hitchcock's films because that is all I have seen. The fact that Google has his entire library to comb through gives them a bit of an unfair head start. Essentially it has removed all the advantage from people who actually watch movies while paying attention and given it to the people whose phones have the best service, which means this program has also removed all the skill from the game. It used to be that if you wanted to know every random person who was in a movie to make an obscure connection you had to actually watch that movie and remember who was in it. Honestly, on more than a few occasions being able to add a few more links for the "Kevin Bacon Game" or "M-O-V-I-E" (another great road trip game) was pretty much the only redeeming quality of watching some truly dreadful films. Instead I'm back to watching a bad movie meaning nothing other than I have wasted hours of my life. I'm not saying that remembering which mid-level actor made a cameo in an otherwise forgettable movie is an important skill to retain, but it was still a skill on some level. But thanks to this program that is no longer the case. Suddenly it is a skill on par with knowing exactly how far to rewind a cassette to get back to the start of the song you just finished.

Still, the bigger issue I have with this new program is the same one I have with most of the things which come from Google or smartphone apps and that is they allows people to not have to actually know anything anymore. Thanks to having the internet at our fingertips at all times there is no urgency to actually retain knowledge because we can always look up our answers. Worse yet, that safety net has caused most people to doubt things they were previously sure of. If you say you are 95% sure of an answer that 5% of doubt will cause the other people in your group to think that means you don't really know and double check through their phones. Even worse, we blindly accept the machine's answers and we shouldn't. In messing around with the "Bacon number" a little this afternoon I have found a few flaws in the program, which clearly just does a common term query. Some links the program uses enter into fuzzy areas by connecting through movies that not even the stars themselves remember working on. And in one example the movie doesn't even exist. I have always said this game should really be based around Christopher Lloyd, because that guy has been in everything. So naturally one of my first attempts was to form a link between Lloyd and Bacon, which Google made by telling me they appeared in a movie called, "Tremors V: The Thunder From Down Under." A quick (and ironic) Google search reveals this movie was never made. It was rumored and a page exists which lists the potential plot, but the film never made it passed the development stages, where I'm sure both actors' names were attached at various points. Score one for the humans.

Look, I appreciate what Google is trying to do here, but they simply seem to have missed the point of the game. Life is not always about being as quick as possible and road trip games are the perfect example of when that applies. The main point of "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon" was supposed be a way to kill time and getting an answer in less than a second doesn't really accomplish that. Sometimes the roundabout way of making the connection is what makes playing fun and that only comes from the fact that no one can see every movie ever made. Trivia games exist specifically to test the trivial knowledge we have acquired over time and few things are as trivial as which person was in which movie. Forgetting a piece of knowledge because it never comes up in your life is normal. I'm sure at some point I knew the capital of Bolivia but it just hasn't come up recently so my brain expelled it. The interesting part of games like this is exploring the strange corner of your brain which was decided to hang on to the fact that Alfred Molina was in the first 5 minutes of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with Karen Allen who was in "Animal House" with Kevin Bacon. And while that may not be the quickest connection between those two, at least I'm sure both movies existed.