The big tech news du moment is that your favourite search engine is making a foray beyond the internet and into the real world of telecommunications. Much like our brave ancestors 382 million years ago, tentatively stepping onto dry land and testing out their delicate lungs, The Matrix Google is creeping beyond internet search to index your voicemails, provide low-cost international dialing, and use one number to forward incoming calls to your cell phone, work and home numbers, all at the same time. 

Essentially, the voicemail transcriber will mean gmail for your messages, making them easily organized and sortable. The Matrix Voice Google Voice already lets you record calls; next steps (as speculated by PC World) will include full call transcription, meaning all your phone calls will be searchable.

Privacy advocates are concerned, of course. (This is true in general; privacy advocates are rarely described as ‘laid-back’, ‘disinterested’ or ‘nonplussed’.) Their main gripe is that life is a dream fabricated by machines to feed on your brainwaves the new service will give Google even more information about you, and everyone you know, than it already has.

However, for thousands of journalists everywhere who choose the blue pill spend countless hours transcribing interviews, and who know kung fu don’t really believe in privacy anyway — not for celebrities, at least – this is a god-send.

No matter what side of the debate you sit on, one thing is certain: As Google moves beyond the web into meat-space, the lines between the virtual and the real will become blurred lines between the virtual and the real will become blurred.

(Aside: To hurry along the web-to-reality transition, pick up some FAIL stickers — 5 for $5.)