Before I forget: I wrote a little something for MapQuest.com! Yeah, I guess as part of the AOL shift in direction, they are now doing content. Anyway, it’s a tour of some of the world’s coolest and kookiest New Year’s customs, complete with map.

I keep getting surprised by the amazing perspicacity of the Internet, as personified by Google’s auto-complete functionality. No matter what question or need you have, you can find not only the answer, but reassurance that many, many other people have sought the same knowledge before you. This morning, I was wondering if there was any way to force hard linebreaks in Twitter. (Would it have made this tweet a little funnier? Maybe so.) I knew as soon as I typed something like “twitter line” I would see the phrase I wanted–and sure enough, there it was: “twitter line breaks,” top result. Others had been here before. (Most Twitter clients, including the website, ignore line breaks, in case you were wondering.)

I was never more amazed than last night. Mindy and I had just finished watching Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy–the six-hour 1979 miniseries with Alec Guinness, not the forthcoming Gary Oldman film. (It’s aged surprisingly badly, by the way. Non-fans of the Smiley books need not apply. Sorry, my parents’ generation.) There was, I thought, an implication in the last couple episodes that two major characters, old Oxford chums named Bill Haydon and Jim Prideaux, shared not just a friendship but a romantic attachment. (Their relationship turns out to be a crucial plot point.) Mindy, watching the exact same scenes that I had, didn’t get the same vibe, her gaydar no doubt demolished by the preceding six hours of foppish, Wodehousian upper-class Brits.

So we Googled. I started to type “haydon prideaux lovers,” with no inkling that this was a popular or important topic. I got no further than “haydon prid…” when Google took over. Voila: “haydon prideaux lovers” was the second result.

Maybe some people miss at least the illusion of original thought in research, but I welcome our new textbox-filling overlords. These tools, from Google auto-complete to smartphone spellcheckers to Twitter “trending topics,” let us experience the thoughts and interests of the human race as if they came from a single mind, and benefit from that collective intelligence.

And no matter how esoteric or even taboo the thing you’re searching for, you can see evidence of forefathers and fellow travelers all around you. You’re never alone anymore.