Assignment 1-4

Kathryn Jones
HUMN 341-Q1WW
Assignment 1-4

Is a coconut a fruit or a nut? (It's actually a seed, who knew?) What time does the North Market close on Sundays? (Five o'clock in case you were wondering.) The Web has been nothing short of a miracle for those with curious minds with questions like these. Trivial questions that pop into one's head can be answered in virtually seconds with search engines like Google and Yahoo. But unless you have a cell phone with Internet access, how can you scratch your curious itch when you're away from home? One company has recognized this demand for random information and has developed a text messaging service called Cha-cha. You simply type your question as a text message and text it to 242-242 (CHA-CHA). Cha-cha answers all kinds of questions easily searched on the Internet for free. It's an excellent example of today's information-hungry popular culture. But how reliable is it? And how can they afford to do this for free? It is impossible to know if the people on the other end are checking for credibility when they find your answer. They could simply be using the first possible answer they see online or perhaps they are not looking it up at all! And as you may have suspected, they do share your phone number with advertisers in order to make money. Overall, the Cha-cha service is a great example of the information-surplus world we are now living in!