Can you imagine life without the internet? Having the internet as a resource has changed the way people of this world will function forever. We have become dependent on it in everyday activities and relied on it for school work and entertainment. I can remember back to the time we had dial up, where I would sit there for 10 minutes just waiting for one page to load. Now the internet is becoming more accessible and is growing to contain more and more information. Google is the most widely used way to access this seemingly infinite amount of information. At first seeing the title, Is Google Making Us Stupid I would have answered of course not. I mean how can having so much information at the tip of our fingertips make us stupid? I would think that it is only making our lives easier and actually improving the amount of knowledge we obtain cause we are constantly exposed.
Carr argues that the internet is shortening the attention span of users, “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text.” I guess I can agree with this idea.. But what about other means of technology? Television, radio, just any electronic is constantly giving us stimulus. We are always busy with something and so when we sit down to read a book of course we are going to have a short attention span. Google is not the only thing shortening our attention span, but I do believe it is training us to discover information in a specific way. Carr hits on this saying, “And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.” Although this maybe true, I don’t think I would want to go back to the days of researching through books in the library. Our world moves so fast pace that we need something like the internet that can search, analyze, and summarize information.
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I liked your analysis and your ideas, people do have shortening attention spans because the wait for merely anything on the computer has ceased to exist. I remember dial-up too haha back in 7th grade when the computer craze for us first started, and none of us knew any different than to just.. be patient. Now, if it takes more than 2 seconds we get all pissed off and X out of the screen and try it again. I still don't think stupid is the right word, because new technology that is created everyday by humans disproves that argument. But, is our generation becoming lazier? Yes.
ReplyDeleteWell, I was searching for something that would be interesting to read, and I came across your title, "Goodbye Weekend" and I wanted to know why such a sacred thing as our weekend would have to go. So, right away as you said, "I would think that it is only making our lives easier and actually improving the amount of knowledge we obtain because we are constantly exposed." I thought the same thing. But I got to thinking of our crazy English class this year, and I realized that it fits into a common theme for our era. Productivity outweighs human content. We get on the web and search for things so quick that we don’t really absorb any of it. We are a generation of terrible skim readers. There is no such thing as patience in research. We try to get the most information in the fastest way possible so it gets recorded on our paper or computer. Even in our classes as we are assigned homework, it is very common to skip reading and go right to the answer. I guess we even “Google” certain questions from assignments in and get the results quicker than we would if we actually read the text, but this knowledge is short-lived. I think the quality of research would improve if we just read a book to find the answer, but as you said, “Our world moves so fast pace that we need something like the internet that can search, analyze, and summarize information.” This is kind of sad to me, but it is very true. We live in too fast pace of a world to take our time by reading a text. We can’t search for answers the same anymore. Boo-Hoo, huh?
ReplyDeleteWell, very insightful blog Andrew. You brought up some ideas that I didn’t even bother to think about. I especially liked when you said, “Television, radio, just any electronic is constantly giving us stimulus… Google is not the only thing shortening our attention span,” I completely agree with you on this. These other sources of media also corrupt our capacities for activities not related to technology. Technology is quick and gets you your information right away. Therefore, our patience with paper research becomes annoying. Due to the extended amount of time that it takes to do paper/ book research it is natural for people to take the easy way out with technology.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I too am not a fan of “paper research”, I think that we seriously need to consider the risks of research on the internet. I mean, internet updates and modifications are virtually accessible to anyone. Do we really want to believe in these databases when the information can be modified by your average person? All I am saying is that our laziness to go the extra amount of time with paper research has led us to believe that the internet is hits 100% in its credibility. And in reality, it just doesn’t.
Anyways, good blog I really enjoyed it.