Back in the mid-2010s, I read a post on Facebook by someone from Great Britain with an acronym. I remember that I was in a rush, so I just quickly asked what the acronym stood for. In response, someone else posted a link to Google and added that I could find the information there. This led a long thread about "mental labor." Today, it crossed my mind that today, someone might respond to a question with a link to ChatGPT instead. I would then point out that a human connection is nicer than a Sprachmaschine—and that Google's search results are much less reliable now than they were a decade ago. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 September 2026)

Asking people questions instead of search engines or chatbots