WHAT IS LOVE?

Oh Google. Has there ever been a more immediate way of tracking our concerns and obsessions? Our hopes and fears? It wasn't long ago that the site used search terms to discern flu trends, thereby providing a new early warning system for flu outbreaks. And now the site has released its "2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist" report, featuring the year's highlights from billions of Google searches around the globe. The results are as fascinating as they are poignantly timeless, in some cases (unless the term is "Sarah Palin"). At a time of war, recession and political drama, the burning question on everyone's mind seems to be: "What is love?"

My heart breaks at the mere thought of these millions of seekers, each one of us wistfully click-tapping this query, probably alone, almost certainly late at night. What plaintive submissions to our modern-day oracle. And the results are inauspicious.

As The Economist reports: "even in these times of economic crisis, people are most concerned with working out what love is."

Barack Obama
I am often both amused and alarmed by some of the search terms that lead readers to our own fair site. Just today, the following search terms netted us some (surely unsuspecting) readers:

* people eating guinea pigs
* painting 16th century skull and other symbols of death study
* when the door of refrigerator is opened, what will be its impact on the room temperature?
* something that has not been made
* felled trees on kenya

I haven't yet spotted "what is love" among the search terms. Though I suppose we haven't exactly offered many answers.

Incidentally, this may be one of my favourite articles on the subject, about the science of love, which appeared in The Economist years ago in time for Valentine's Day. The answer? Love is less about the heart than about the brain, and all of its messy neurochemistry. Dopiness and dopamine, alas.
~ EMILY BOBROW

Graphic credit: AFP, The Economist