Mastering the Ask Era

In Back to the Future Part II, Marty McFly walks into Cafe 80’s in 2015 and plays an old arcade game. He’s pretty good at it. But when he finishes, a couple of kids watching him are baffled: “You mean you have to use your hands? That’s like a baby’s toy!”

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Something big has changed in how we find information. Before, we searched Google, clicked through a bunch of links, and pieced everything together ourselves. Now we just ask a question and get an answer we can improve through conversation.

AI that can search isn’t just another tool. It’s a completely different way of working with information.

The Old Way: Search and Put It Together

This was the Google era. You got good at turning your questions into search terms, quickly scanning results, and opening way too many browser tabs. If you were really organized, you saved links for later.

Then you did the hard work of reading through different websites, figuring out what was useful, and putting it all together in your head to get your answer.

You learned to spot good sources. Not just the facts, but you could tell when a website was sketchy because it had more ads than actual content. You got better at seeing patterns across different articles.

The New Way: Ask and Check

Now that we’re in the conversation era, your main skill is asking good questions. Instead of hunting through search results and trying to avoid all the sponsored links at the top, you’re talking to an AI that can instantly pull together information from the entire internet, your own files, and your company’s data.

Your brain does completely different work now. Instead of collecting puzzle pieces, you’re checking whether the completed puzzle looks right. You need to quickly figure out if an answer is complete, correct, and actually helpful for what you need.

The question isn’t whether you’ll make this switch. It’s how quickly you’ll realize that how you work with information has changed forever.