Is Google Making us Stupid? February 18, 2009
Posted by afoote in : Knowledge Management , trackbackIn Allan Blagg’s, a student in my IS481 class, comments about Grown Up Digital he referred to “The Atlantic project“ at the website http://thinkagain.theatlantic.com/. The website presents a number of philosophical questions such as – “Is America still the land of opportunity?” and “Why does your dog pretend to like you?”
One of the questions of The Atlantic project is – “Is Google making us Stupid?”
To answer this question, the term stupid may need to be defined. Is stupidity the same as ignorance, apathy or just lack of intelligence? What is intelligence?
I am sure that a number of us in the baby boomer generation remember our parents telling us that television will make us stupid. Maybe that is the problem with the world today. We all watched too much television.
In the article Is Google making us Stupid?, the author, Nicholas Carr, criticizes the internet and Google for changing the way we think. We skim web pages instead of reading every word. Because of text message and instant messaging, we are reading more, but it is a different type of reading. The internet is causing us to stop read complete books from cover to cover. This is a problem because skimming permits the reader to miss details of the book.
This may be true, but when we consider how much information Google makes available for us you have to wonder how can Google make us stupid. Although Google can make an overwhelming amount of information available to us, there is a personal responsibility to use the information in the appropriate way. That is the individual’s responsibility not Google’s. Personal responsibility has a part in determining if Google makes us stupid.
Is Google making us stupid, or is it how we use Google that makes us stupid?
If Google makes us stupid, what would we be if we did not use it?
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