oasis

Like many people, I rely a lot on the convenience of search engines not just to find sites and documents but also for little things like converting units and currencies, checking the time in other places, getting the local weather forecast, looking up word definitions, etc. But with AI now being prevalent in pretty much every major search engine, I find myself wanting to detach more and rely less on these services for a couple of reasons—AI being prone to delusions when giving search results, and the unnecessary increase in energy associated.

Each search we perform on a platform like Google uses about 0.0003 kWh—equivalent to 0.2g of carbon dioxide emissions, or enough energy to light a 60-watt bulb for 17 seconds. […] AI, however, is even more energy-intensive. Depending on the complexity of a query—whether it’s text, an image, or a video—it can consume 5 to 10 times more energy than a standard search.

—Eoghan McHugh, The Hidden Cost of AI: Energy, Emissions, and Climate Impact

One solution I can think of on an individual scale is to simply eliminate the need for search engines as much as possible through the use of offline-first or local tools to suit my needs. These can be small utilities like wttr.in, Alexander Cobleigh’s unit conversion tool, or my currency converter. Other options include adding Wiktionary* to browser search engines to get definitions directly, or installing dictionaries to be used offline, or hell even using physical books as reference.

For leisurely browsing and serendipity purposes, I’ll stick to frequenting our forum, the webring, and the Fediverse. There’s always things of interest shared by friends and friends of friends and you wouldn’t even have to trudge through the sponsored SEO-spammed search results.

It’s a good time to create a personal startpage/homepage with direct links to tools in lieu of taking a detour and walking down the usual tree-lined Ecosian path, and have my own little oasis.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

—josh