from the comics i read to the movies i watch, it seems everyone is talking about universal knowledge and the collective unconscious. the idea that great progress is made in silent and sudden bursts is circulating. turns out the answers to all our problems are simply in the ether...or on google.
of course, not everyone falls into the pro-google category i would claim i belong to. those more "old school" than carr would say that answers not hard-won by tireless research are not truly earned or deserved. that google makes nearly unlimited amounts of data (it's safe to say call any database with one trillion items "nearly unlimited") available to us in a few key strokes has certainly changed our culture. it has changed the path of human intelligence and i don't think this is a bad thing.
carr cites a number of examples where technology threatened a way of life and those that witnessed the change cursed it. you'd probably have a hard time finding a group of people today who think guttenberg was a jerk, but the whole movable type thing didn't go over so well with those that had a vested interest in the hand-printed word. sure, hindsight is 20-20 and we know now that the democratization of information revolutionized the world, but let's learn from history a bit before we go repeating it.
google, yes, makes us lazy. i think that's a fair (ish) statement. with the internet on my phone, and my phone with me wherever i go, i never hesitate to consult the internet when my brain refuses to supply an answer to the question at hand. maybe that's not the best behavior. but what about the positive changes the internet/google brings? carr talks about the plastic brain and i think i've got it because i know my neurons are moving! my hard drive reformatting! i may be easily distracted as of late, but i am able to make faster connections to a wider array of material than ever before. i may forgo a deep reading of article, but when i recall several pieces together i am making quick, sharp choices. i am storing more information and learning how to synthesize more complex ideas at a greater speed and that is a very good thing in my book. the content of these ideas doesn't matter as much as my increased comprehension skills.
carr talks about the threat of people becoming machines too, but i feel this is just a sensationalist way for others to try to scare change off. there will always be the human element, the part of this technological evolution that introduces chance into the equation, and i don't believe that can ever truly be overcome by algorithms. mankind will continue to build smart machines and tell them what they must know, but i have no fear that the reverse will happen.
ps. for someone who claims his attention span is spread thin, he wrote a pretty lengthy article. i wonder if it took him multiple sittings to finish the re-read.
I wonder if it's Google that makes us lazy or if an (over)abundance of information that inclines us to use crutches like Google to deal with it.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally with you on different ways of "reading" information and evaluating it, and these days it might be just as good, if not better to be an effective and deep searcher as it is to be a focused reader. Let's not throw our books away, but if a useful tool that helps us in our everyday lives comes along and changes the way we think, well, I don't think that's unprecedented or terrifying per se.