Utility of Google-Doodle

Don’t laugh.

Yes, Google-Doodle does have some usefulness. I have felt it for a long time, but today I am sitting down to explaining, to myself, the usefulness of this “ever-changing” emblem of Google.

My story starts in 1976, August-September; I was doing my post-graduate studies in civil engineering at IIT Kanpur, and one of my friends, the same in electrical engineering. And, one of the courses he was taking at that time went by the name (as I remember it now) communication. And, you could not have stopped him talking about his teacher for the course – how his teaching was second only to Paper Masala Dosai, his favourite dish – and also about some obscure scientist of Bell Labs called Claude Shannon.

As Google-Doodle tells you, today, 2016-04-30, is Shannon’s 100^th birthday. Well, that is quite trivial for me, because Shannon is featured quite extensively in a popular book on communication systems developed, across centuries, that I have and read seriously (I am strange in that sense, I read popular books not for their popularity or to drop names but for the contents). I have heard more about Shannon than his birthday.

Yet, I started to think about the others who have not had the opportunity to learn about this pioneer. That is when, how useful the Google-Doodle is, at least to those who have been brushed by the zephyr of curiosity, struck me.

Every day, as I get onto the Net, the first thing I do is check on Google-Doodle. For more times than I care to remember, I know what is being featured on the Doodle (like today). But, there are other days when I haven’t a clue and if my mood allows, I click on it. And, I have benefitted knowing some details about a remote corner of our world how it has come to be made. Neither significant nor trivial, yet satisfying.

Yes, Google-Doodle shows me the way to be more satisfied with our world while also telling me how to be further satisfied.

Raghuram Ekambaram