Craig Shaynak personifies the world’s largest search engine in order to illustrate our dependence on technology and our profound ability to inanely pester the web for song lyrics, card tricks and directions. However, as Shaynak points out, we’re actually fairly competent in basic research skills, so resorting to the web at every twist and turn of a conversation on our android phones is unnecessary.
Shaynak engages with the audience as soon as we ‘log onto’ our Google Gmail, and offers some insider’s information and gossip about the other web giants – it’s witty and you start to feel curious and inquisitive about the personas of the otherwise inanimate websites we use every day. However, the performance did lose some of its pace and momentum, with Shaynak repeating previous gags without creatively building on them to encourage more laughs.
Shaynak asks the audience to search Google Maps, use Google Translate, yet seems to surrender to hecklers who doubt the authenticity of his mandarin translation, relinquishing the facade of Google and slipping back into a general stand-up comedian mode. Nevertheless, Shaynak’s material cannot be criticised for its lack of originality, and I implore the Facebook procrastinator, Google dependent, Twitter addict 21st century man of technology to meet the globe’s most experienced researcher who spends his life sacrificially aiding the trivial needs and ponderings of others. A performance that will only get better.
