very few worthwhile tasks?

Where to start? I think this tweet sort of treats sentences/information and “tasks” as overly atomic, decontextualized (and perhaps relies too heavily on “in one go”).

My dissertation is about how data engineers heavily (and effectively?) rely on general-purpose search engines to do worthwhile tasks for their jobs. For decades they—and many other sorts of professionals—have navigated their work and the web through incantations much shorter than 2-3 sentences:

Probably 90% of my job is Googling things

Those practices were not handed to them, but developed over time and are woven through their tools, organizational processes, and discourse:

the occupational, professional, and technical components supply a significant amount of context, or structure, as scaffolding for query selection and search evaluation."

This tweet seems to position people as previously (effectively) believing something about language and tasks that is akin to superficial pronouncements/readings of “just google it”. With some reflection we recognize that the ‘just’ is very context/audience/subject-dependent, indexical, and that communication requires real work¹. (Perhaps it is like telling someone embarking on a rigorous trail ultramarathon] to just put one foot in front of another…)

And it also reminds me of “google knows everything until you have an assignment 😂” — general-purpose web search has worked very well for tasks scaffolded within our environment and lives, but when we are thrust into something new new, there may be more work to do (jarring as that can be).

Or maybe I take issue with “can be described”? Is that what a search query or prompt is? A description?