Is Google Making Us Stupid? A Response

I find that for my first blog, this to be a most timely subject matter as I started the first of the classes towards my degree in Information Technology at the same time I started this class. I love that technology will be used for an entirely different class and it was so unexpected. My assignment is to respond to the essay titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid" written by Nicholas Carr. The author writes that he is not alone in his thinking that all of the information we receive via technology is actually "reprograming us" and "The Net's intellectual ethic remains obscure". There is no research really being conducted on the impact of the internet and how it affects cognitive thinking.

I will find it interesting to see how this essay is viewed by the other students in my class as I know that I am the oldest by far, my views and opinion has been 45 years in the making, so I feel that I am truly prepared to blog on this with a sort of interesting insight. I remember seeing the first computer while I was in 3rd grade. It was a huge thing and all we did was make pictures with it, that all looked like LiteBrite artwork. Everything was what I would call "boxy", you couldn't make circles. When I graduated high school we were not even on the internet yet. It was also around the time that I was introduced "dittos" as we called them, today they are called photocopies and done in less than a second. Usually the teacher would hand the dittos out just after they ran them off, the purple ink would still be damp so you could press your finger down on the paper and get a word tatoo! Of course the letters were ususally created from a typewriter only later in high school from a word processor and then only one type of font! I remember the first calculator, fax machine(with the rolled shiny paper), push button telephone, answering machine, word processors and then into computers etc. I bring my past technology memories into this to help explain where I am coming from. I believe that I am from the generation that saw the technology born and watched it mature into what it is now. You would think that I was around since the stone age, but no, I am 45 and a baby boomer. Most of the people who will read this and respond will be classmates and were born into the technology of today, they will be from a different perspective then of mine for sure. I used encyclopedias, and newspapers, had to take hand written notes,complete written book reports along with artwork done by hand, never printed. It wasn't until late in high school when they had highlighters and white-out yes, you would hate it when you would have to rewrite it all over again! When I did research, it was work for sure, you would really have to dig in and buckle down. I would go to the library if I didn't have enough information in the World Book Enclopedia set my parents bought. Sometimes still not find the right book there or low and behold, someone took the book out before me, argh the work. You may say that it sounds like I am complaining about it, but that would not be correct, I am thankful for it. I can still remember some of the book reports that I created in years of schooling. One that comes to mind is one that I did on Oceanography, I can remember having to create a menu for a seafood resturant and the funny menu items I created but yet true to life. If you ask my 2 daughters ages 22 and almost 20 about any of their reports I doubt they would remember any of them in the short time they have been out of elementary school. I learned and retained the information and have carried it into my adulthood. I have a favorite saying that I created and it is perfect for this topic, I call this society that we live in now, "a cut-n-paste society". People will just cut and paste information and plug it into whatever it is that they are doing at the time, no thought behind it, probably not even checking to see if it all spelled correctly. How can anyone remember and retain informtion if you are not taking it all in and working with it in your mind and hands, it must somestimes be tangible. Yes, you can argue that there are times that you don't need to retain information for life as for examples past baseball scores, movie stars and the movies they were in, I am guilty of settling many an argument by running to the laptop typing in my question and asking Jeeves, but what I am talking about is really geared towards other types of situtations where you need to learn and grasp the material that you are reading about. We are suffering from "information overload" as quoted by Playwright Richard Foremen in a recent essay and therefore losing complex thinking. It is all at our fingertips instantly rather than taking the time to read, and research, which I believe helps us retain the subject matter by the steps we take to get the information. We need to think for ourselves, rather then have it all done for us, which is how one learns to be self sufficient and be your own thinker. When surfing the web you do just that, surf. You ride the top of wave and then into the center, but you never really get into all of it and you are going to fast. Hyperlinking to the middle of an article rather then reading through the entire article, you could miss really important information that you didn't even realize you needed.

While reading this you may believe that I am not a fan of all the technology available to us while googling, not the case at all, I have a passion for it and embrace it whole heartily. I owned a computer that had floppy discs and a green screen and thought it was just the cats meow, I own an iPod, a digital camera, a laptop and a cell phone. I just believe that you have take it for what it is worth and use it to the total potential. For example try and google information and find out if the book is available in your local library or try and not focus on the ads along the sides while you are looking up a subject. Don't click all the hyperlinks and get off topic. Stay on a page and look around, scroll to the bottom, you never know what you will find. Print out pages and re-read, rather than save a copy on your computer. Take hand written notes rather than cut and paste the information, write down the website for future reference. The world wide web is just mind boggling, but don't let it boggle you stupid, boggle you smart. LOL