"With Google I'm starting to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. People in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless"

Doug Coupland draws attention to a unique cultural shift brought on by the digital age, specifically the ubiquitous access to information facilitated by tools like Google. The ease with which answers can now be sought out and found, often within seconds, represents a remarkable development in human history. However, Coupland voices a subtle anxiety about the costs of this hyper-availability of knowledge. Excessive familiarity with answers, facts, and solutions erodes the ambiguity and mystery that once lingered in everyday existence. The constant ability to seek clarification, resolve uncertainties, and demolish gaps in understanding has become so routine that the actual act of not knowing, of being stumped or momentarily lost, is in danger of disappearing.

There is a suggestion here that something valuable is at stake: the emotional and cognitive space created by uncertainty. Moments of cluelessness have historically fostered creativity, conversation, and wonder. Not knowing compels speculation, storytelling, and genuine dialogue. The ephemeral discomfort of ignorance can spark curiosity, perseverance, and connection with others as we share questions and search together for meaning or answers. Instant access to definitive knowledge, while empowering, may also short-circuit these nuanced experiences, leaving us over-saturated, intellectually fatigued, and perhaps lonelier in our omniscience.

Coupland projects this phenomenon into the future, imagining that by 2020, society may paradoxically regard ignorance, or the feeling of being lost, with wistfulness. The uncharted, the mysterious, and the ambiguous could become luxuries, rare states that older generations recall with longing. A time when asking questions without immediate answers was common might elicit nostalgia, as people remember how it felt to puzzle over a problem, discuss, and invent possibilities, rather than simply consulting a search bar. In the relentless drive to know everything, Coupland gently warns, we must not overlook the subtle joys of occasionally not knowing.