Google, Kansas

Holy shit the capital of my state is Google!

For the duration of March, Kansas's capital city, Topeka, will change it's name to Google. This is, in fact, in an offering in an attempt to garner the favor the internet deity. Google has recently announced that since America is falling behind the rest of the world in terms of average internet speed, they're "going to install new Internet connections in unannounced locations, giving those communities Internet speeds 100 times faster than those elsewhere, with data transfer rates faster than 1 gigabit per second." Topeka hopes to be the lucky city chosen for a testing ground.

Google's mayor BillyBunten is 79, and the kindest thing this article has to say regarding his computer skills is that "The Topeka, Kansas, mayor has an e-mail account." And yet he senses that this new technology will be beneficial to the young (voting) citizens of his city:

"To have this high-speed where people can sit down and have lunch and still keep working is a positive for young people," he said. "The young people are the ones that caught onto this and go to the Internet and asked people in the city to sign on as supporting Google coming to Topeka."

Now, Some people would assume that Mr. Bunten looked at this and saw an opportunity to convince one of the few companies that is still hiring people to set up shop his town, or maybe even that he's just crazy; if you read the article you'll find that he wasn't the first mayor of Topeka to rename the city because of something his kid wouldn't shut up about. But I look at this situation, and I see a man who has no idea what the internet is or how it is used, but can still revere the technology for the power it clearly holds. He admires it from a safe distances where he's unlikely to spill anything on the keyboard or innocently click on a popup, but he admires it all the same. He doesn't understand it, but he sees certain members of his community working a strange and powerful magic with it, and he realizes that it is a mighty thing. For a man with literally zero grasp of the internet's form or function to see and acknowledge its power... well that's like when Moonwatcher picked up his first bone.

For the next 28 days, Kansas is a little less lame.