In This Day and Age - Where's George?

Mik Muller, July 27, 2006, Montague Reporter

Occasionally you come upon the real reason the Internet, or specifically the World Wide Web, was invented. Or perhaps it's just a logical conclusion to the summation of all the bits that make it up -- including the people. And the way you sometimes stumble upon this reason, this tidbit, this... essence of the being of the Internet, can sometimes surprise you, because it may come from the most unexpected places. Like your local supermarket, as change for your milk.

Just this past October I went to Food City, in our fair village of Turners Falls, to buy some groceries. In the change I was handed was a more-than-usually colorful one-dollar bill. I looked at it closely and noticed that there were ink stampings and pen markings all over it, asking me questions like "Where has this dollar bill been?" and "Where's George?"

This then was my introduction to WheresGeorge.com

I'm sure this is how 95% of the visitors to this site find it. And it's pretty cool I have to say.

Some scientists, and theoreticians, and futurists, and some general crack-pots who hang about local bars, have always thought that eventually the Internet will be the ultimate connector-of-it-all, and will integrate with your life till it's beyond ubiquitous... it'll be invisible. You'll be able to type in the serial number of just about anything and find out how to buy parts and when the next servicing is scheduled. You'll be able to type in the coordinates of a street corner and find the police log entries for it as well as what the weather will be in a week, and what's on sale at the haberdashery two shops down.

And so, this is slowly happening, and I have to say it's pretty frightening.

Google has a new thing called local.google.com where you can type in your street address to get a street map that can also be a topographic map, or both -- merged -- at the click of a button. You can't quite read the headlines off the newspaper in the driveway, and the image was probably taken a few months ago, but it's pretty neat nevertheless.

On Amazon you can now browse through just about any book you want to buy. They've scanned in the first few pages of most of the books they have for sale so you can take a look before you buy. Is that crazy?

And it goes on and on. In another five years the web will be so vast, so wide, so full, and literally everywhere -- on flat panels in the back seat of cabs, on your watch (remember Dick Tracy?) ... it's already on some cell phones -- that it'll mesh with our lives just as the phone does now, and TV. And forget about TV. That may disappear altogether. 200 channels? How about millions?

Anyway, back to www.Wheresgeorge.com

This website answers the age-old question "I wonder where this dollar bill has been before? Who used it last? What did they buy with it? Where did the gas drive them to? What concert? What movie? What brand of diapers? Did they buy cigarettes? Guns? Porn? Booze? Candy? Milk?"

On this site you can type in the serial number of any bill you have in your wallet or your bag to see where it's been before... but only if a previous owner has gone to the website and entered the bill's serial number and location information, and maybe the condition of the bill itself. And you can even get a map of where the bill's been. If your bill hasn't been entered yet, then it's "yours" and you can track where it goes from now on. You'll get an email every time your bill gets a "hit" meaning someone else has entered in your bill's serial number. Golly... I wonder where it's gone off to now?

The record holder on the site is a one-dollar bill that started its log entries in Dayton, OH, back on March 15, 2002. It was next logged in Scottsville, KY two months later on May 15, a distance of 229 miles. The bill then traveled to Tennessee, Florida, hung about Texas for a while, popped over the border to Louisiana for a few days around Christmas 2003, then back to Texas for a few months, then on to Utah and then Michigan, where it was last sighted in March 2005. It could be there still. Or not.

Most bills do not have any writing on them when they are handed to you, but some actually have writing in pen, or multi-colored rubber stamp. Yes. Some people actually by custom rubber stamps that say www.WheresGeorge.com and are busily stamping every dollar bill they can get their hands on.

Most frightening is the uber-power user on the website "Wattsburg Gary" who has entered in 402,618 bills worth $1,292,226. Yes, that's four hundred and two THOUSAND, six hundred and eighteen bills, ranging from ones all the way up to hundreds. This man has a serious hobby.

And it's not enough to sit in front of his computer and type in all those serial numbers (yes, he's typed them all in) but he also stamps each and every one with his custom rubber stamp, in red ink.

The bill I got at Food City in Turners Falls has three red ink stamps on it, but it's not one of his. Mine started its journey in Springfield with Eric Goldhorn, age 51, who has entered 525 bills, 47 of which have been re-entered into the website by other people (20 of which were picked up in Massachusetts). If I wanted to I could email him to tell him I was handed one of his bills as change for my milk, and that I spent it on beer at JK's.

Yeah, it's a little spooky. But that's what the web does. Every once in a while it hits you with a "You must be kidding" kind of thing. WheresGeorge.com is one of those sites, if you ask me.

-Mik

Posted: to General News on Thu, Jul 27, 2006
Updated: Tue, Jun 24, 2025