Dinosaur Roars, "Guuugol!"

Justice V.V. Mendoza, interrupting himself in the middle of his impassioned lecture, condescendingly inquired upon his Judicial Review class whether the patience and aptitude for acute legal research continued to be an inevitable feature of "learning law in the grand manner". Randomly picking at unsuspecting students, he tested us on our familiarity with anachronistic research tools such as American Jurisprudence and Corpus Juris Secundum by asking in which parts of the library they may be found and what colors their covers were. After satisfying himself as to our common marginal knowledge of the existence and purpose of these treatises, he finally asked in classic Socratic methodology (i.e., an agonizing question-and-answer-routine wherein the professor asks questions the correct answers to which, only he or she knows) what we use today as our principal reference for legal research. Sensing a probably forthcoming joke, the students erupted in a cacophony of loud whispers.

“SCRA,” said one, timidly.

“Philippine Reports,” said another.

“Lex Libris?”

“Official Gazette?” and so on...

“Noooooo,” interjected the Justice in a raspy, authoritative tone. It's “Guuugol!”

Quite baffled and surely afraid to offend the esteemed Justice by having to ask him to repeat himself, the students groped at one another: “Ano raw 'yon? Ano raw ‘yon?” Then, after a considerable lapse of time, a brilliant one among many blurted, “Ah! GOOGLE!”

Lo and behold, a dinosaur, with his roaring, “Guuugol!” impressed thirty-something half-dimwits by showing that he also knows what a computer and the Internet are and what purposeful things he can do with them.

While we can now easily gorge at an illimitable amount of information anytime because technology has alchemized ink and paper, I wonder: do the Internet and its devices still conduce to the mind’s expansion and growth? Does the Internet just bloat our minds, or does it still also nourish? Considering the law of diminishing returns, is the acumen to make much meaning out of little information not already sacrificed with the mind being flooded with the torrents and torrents of information brought by the Internet (assuming the former is for us more important than the latter, which may be called, “mind obesity”, perhaps)?

The law of diminishing returns presents itself in the apparent deteriorating quality of justice dispensed by our courts due to the worsening clogging of their dockets. Just as a court surely has an optimal number of cases it can simultaneously try, hear and decide, beyond which it can no longer perform its functions with the same prudence and promptness, our minds may already be brimming with Internet information – information, which can no longer be processed in our minds to be anything useful.

Raul S. Grapilon

Entry No. 2