There's this article written by John Naughton which I've read quite recently. The title of the article clearly states its case: "I Google, Therefore I am Losing the Ability to Think." Naughton introduced his essay by posing a question that seemed to call not only for a simple yes or no response but a substantial take on the implications it gives.
"Is Google making us stupid?"
The question itself is also the title of an article written by Nicholas Carr which was published in The Atlantic. Apparently, the question is founded on the presumption as well as the observation that people nowadays can't seem to escape the temptation of hugely relying on the internet to get the information they need, and even less care about. That, perhaps, is especially true to this generation of people who constantly pound the keyboards and surf the internet for everything that they want to search, or know more about. More to that, age has become less and less irrelevant when it comes to the demographics which tell about the range of individuals, public and private, scouring the virtual world during their idle moments and even during their moments at work.
And stranger things have happened, too. Not only do we now have virtual friends, given that back in the earlier times to be a friend implied proximity to the other party except when both of you are pen pals—although being friends by virtue of written letters sent across wide distances, especially between prison camp and some obscure region in this world, is entirely another matter—we also now have virtual relationships of the more intimate kind. It's the kind that makes us wonder how love, or parodies of it, can truly conquer the miles, or kilometers, depending on what system of measurement the country your living in is using. That is patently true, of course. What with most of today's cyber relationships where Filipinas or Filipinos first get to know another person of some other nationality, preferably American or British, in some online chat room or social community website. These things are strange when you look upon them from the lens of the sixties or the seventies, and maybe an earlier generation. I was born decades after those years, but from the tales I've heard from the recollection of my grandfathers and grandmothers I barely can say there's little difference between the sixties or the seventies and the twenty-first century.
Quite on the contrary, there are monumental differences. It's enough to say that what one can do once upon a time by traveling across vast oceans and mountains on a horseback or on a carriage one can do now by pressing buttons and making use of wireless connections. Apart from that, the very concept of reading has taken on a new form. We don't only read books or newspapers in their traditional form these days, "traditional form" meaning hardbound tomes, or softbound ones, the torn and tattered pages of which have endured years of hands picking on every page. That traditional form also includes the newspapers that we read while holding with both hands, or with one hand with the other holding a cup of coffee.
Now, we also read newspapers and books, even magazines and journals in a whole new form, "new form" being online versions, or virtual extensions of a news daily or a popular book. And of course, who can simply forget blogs? For all we know, some other new form of the media might be well on its way to cyberspace. In all of these, whether strange or equally fascinating—which is oftentimes two different ways of describing the same thing in the online world—the point is that a lot of things have changed, and that these changes have given birth to new ways of doing things.
At the least, we do not only browse the pages of books and magazines in these modern and modernized times. We also browse the webpages of websites that feature electronic versions of books and magazines. I do recall a time when I came to know that a friend of mine already had an e-book version of Harry Potter, the book authored by J. K. Rowling and widely talked about among circles of teenagers. Never mind if they were teenagers only in spirit and not in body. That's a whole different story. I wasn't really a big fan of the book, not even until today, although I would have to say it created such an immense scene in the world of fiction that the words "J. K. Rowling" would easily ring a bell, as it did in the past and still today, rippling through the continents like an inescapable temptation of the mind.
I also recall the time when I first got a glimpse of the websites of this country's mainstream media, or "old" media as some others would say. That time, I learned that the websites typically include the stories which the newspapers publish the vey next day. Well, it was something I appreciated, knowing that I get to read the news a few hours after they have happened, unlike their more physical versions which only circulated in the country once a day at the least and at the most.
So, is Google making us stupid? Or more generally, are search engines making us less mindful of the ways and how's and what's of learning? Well, yes and no. The yes part has something to do with being entirely dependent on the internet in finding relevant and quality reads. Or by mining the vastness of the virtual realm for scholarly reasons under the guise of research, one can eventually land on a sea of totally irrelevant and unconfirmed data. The way we assimilate the information from thousands of webpages also plays a critical role in shaping our online experience. Assuming we think while we read and not simply browse and readily accept what we read online, one can be far ahead of the stocks of readers who do the exact opposite. I've been guilty of that before, and I've learned from that lesson very well. But you know what they say, everyday is a learning experience. The threat remains.
The no part has something to do with the manner in which the internet has contributed a lot to the efforts of making information more and more available, and less and less susceptible to the dangers of capitalist madness and vice. Which is that some people are put out of the fence, or are excluded from the group with the purchasing power, by virtue of their lack of access to books and other writings that can greatly contribute to the basin of knowledge that we may already have. You don't have money or a credit card, that's bad enough for you to be ripped off of the golden chance to own a copy of the writings of your most worshipped authors aside from God, or Allah, or Buddha, or Bathala, or Darwin. But with the internet, a good deal of ploughing through search engine results would lead you to what you might be looking for. Might is the operative word there.
Of course, that is not to say that the internet is free from the hands of capitalists. On the opposite, the internet has seen numerous instances where money-making is the main agenda of corporations in varying shapes and sizes. However, the trick lies in the ability to sift through the search engine results and pluck the one you need out of the basket. The trick lies in the ability to collect and collect then select, not in the sense of collecting mistresses or partners and selecting the suitable one for whatever purpose and reason although the idea behind that could be just the same.
But that aside, the tricky parts are exactly the parts where your mind works its magic. Those are the parts where you make use of your brain and logic first and last. Those are the parts where you splice and dice the trivial and throw away the junk so as to preserve the fractions of treasures left behind. Those are the parts where you tinker with your senses and sensibility for a while by knowing what to know in the list of search results and browsing what to browse in the hundreds, if not thousands, of websites that you may find.
So, yes, Google has its ways of making us stupid. And no, Google does not always inflict harm than it does us any good. Substitute the term search engine with Google and the equation stands at par.
"Is Google making us stupid?"
The question itself is also the title of an article written by Nicholas Carr which was published in The Atlantic. Apparently, the question is founded on the presumption as well as the observation that people nowadays can't seem to escape the temptation of hugely relying on the internet to get the information they need, and even less care about. That, perhaps, is especially true to this generation of people who constantly pound the keyboards and surf the internet for everything that they want to search, or know more about. More to that, age has become less and less irrelevant when it comes to the demographics which tell about the range of individuals, public and private, scouring the virtual world during their idle moments and even during their moments at work.
And stranger things have happened, too. Not only do we now have virtual friends, given that back in the earlier times to be a friend implied proximity to the other party except when both of you are pen pals—although being friends by virtue of written letters sent across wide distances, especially between prison camp and some obscure region in this world, is entirely another matter—we also now have virtual relationships of the more intimate kind. It's the kind that makes us wonder how love, or parodies of it, can truly conquer the miles, or kilometers, depending on what system of measurement the country your living in is using. That is patently true, of course. What with most of today's cyber relationships where Filipinas or Filipinos first get to know another person of some other nationality, preferably American or British, in some online chat room or social community website. These things are strange when you look upon them from the lens of the sixties or the seventies, and maybe an earlier generation. I was born decades after those years, but from the tales I've heard from the recollection of my grandfathers and grandmothers I barely can say there's little difference between the sixties or the seventies and the twenty-first century.
Quite on the contrary, there are monumental differences. It's enough to say that what one can do once upon a time by traveling across vast oceans and mountains on a horseback or on a carriage one can do now by pressing buttons and making use of wireless connections. Apart from that, the very concept of reading has taken on a new form. We don't only read books or newspapers in their traditional form these days, "traditional form" meaning hardbound tomes, or softbound ones, the torn and tattered pages of which have endured years of hands picking on every page. That traditional form also includes the newspapers that we read while holding with both hands, or with one hand with the other holding a cup of coffee.
Now, we also read newspapers and books, even magazines and journals in a whole new form, "new form" being online versions, or virtual extensions of a news daily or a popular book. And of course, who can simply forget blogs? For all we know, some other new form of the media might be well on its way to cyberspace. In all of these, whether strange or equally fascinating—which is oftentimes two different ways of describing the same thing in the online world—the point is that a lot of things have changed, and that these changes have given birth to new ways of doing things.
At the least, we do not only browse the pages of books and magazines in these modern and modernized times. We also browse the webpages of websites that feature electronic versions of books and magazines. I do recall a time when I came to know that a friend of mine already had an e-book version of Harry Potter, the book authored by J. K. Rowling and widely talked about among circles of teenagers. Never mind if they were teenagers only in spirit and not in body. That's a whole different story. I wasn't really a big fan of the book, not even until today, although I would have to say it created such an immense scene in the world of fiction that the words "J. K. Rowling" would easily ring a bell, as it did in the past and still today, rippling through the continents like an inescapable temptation of the mind.
I also recall the time when I first got a glimpse of the websites of this country's mainstream media, or "old" media as some others would say. That time, I learned that the websites typically include the stories which the newspapers publish the vey next day. Well, it was something I appreciated, knowing that I get to read the news a few hours after they have happened, unlike their more physical versions which only circulated in the country once a day at the least and at the most.
So, is Google making us stupid? Or more generally, are search engines making us less mindful of the ways and how's and what's of learning? Well, yes and no. The yes part has something to do with being entirely dependent on the internet in finding relevant and quality reads. Or by mining the vastness of the virtual realm for scholarly reasons under the guise of research, one can eventually land on a sea of totally irrelevant and unconfirmed data. The way we assimilate the information from thousands of webpages also plays a critical role in shaping our online experience. Assuming we think while we read and not simply browse and readily accept what we read online, one can be far ahead of the stocks of readers who do the exact opposite. I've been guilty of that before, and I've learned from that lesson very well. But you know what they say, everyday is a learning experience. The threat remains.
The no part has something to do with the manner in which the internet has contributed a lot to the efforts of making information more and more available, and less and less susceptible to the dangers of capitalist madness and vice. Which is that some people are put out of the fence, or are excluded from the group with the purchasing power, by virtue of their lack of access to books and other writings that can greatly contribute to the basin of knowledge that we may already have. You don't have money or a credit card, that's bad enough for you to be ripped off of the golden chance to own a copy of the writings of your most worshipped authors aside from God, or Allah, or Buddha, or Bathala, or Darwin. But with the internet, a good deal of ploughing through search engine results would lead you to what you might be looking for. Might is the operative word there.
Of course, that is not to say that the internet is free from the hands of capitalists. On the opposite, the internet has seen numerous instances where money-making is the main agenda of corporations in varying shapes and sizes. However, the trick lies in the ability to sift through the search engine results and pluck the one you need out of the basket. The trick lies in the ability to collect and collect then select, not in the sense of collecting mistresses or partners and selecting the suitable one for whatever purpose and reason although the idea behind that could be just the same.
But that aside, the tricky parts are exactly the parts where your mind works its magic. Those are the parts where you make use of your brain and logic first and last. Those are the parts where you splice and dice the trivial and throw away the junk so as to preserve the fractions of treasures left behind. Those are the parts where you tinker with your senses and sensibility for a while by knowing what to know in the list of search results and browsing what to browse in the hundreds, if not thousands, of websites that you may find.
So, yes, Google has its ways of making us stupid. And no, Google does not always inflict harm than it does us any good. Substitute the term search engine with Google and the equation stands at par.
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