IS GOOGLE MAKING US STOOPID?
James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine
To celebrate the Atlantic’s current issue with the thought provoking cover story, “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?”, the publishers of Australian current affairs periodical The Monthly are sending their friends from across the pond an online gift subscription.
This ‘gift’ includes access to the Monthly archive and Gideon Haigh’s award-winning essay published in February 2006, “How Google is Making Us Stupid.”
Yes, it’s another fracas between magazine publishers.
At Anthill, we haven’t been so outraged since SmartCompany.com.au decided to run an article titled ‘30 hot entrepreneurs aged 30 and under’ just 10 days before the long-publicised release of Anthill’s inaugural 30under30 awards.
Or since Dynamic Business ran its ‘Disaster Strikes’ cover two months after Anthill’s highly successful and trend-breaking ‘Disaster Edition.’
Or since Fast Thinking decided to launch in Australia because Australia didn’t have a magazine dedicated to innovation (What the!?).
Actually, I’m not outraged at all. I’m not outraged about the Atlantic article or my spurious accusations above (although I did gain personal pleasure from airing them).
No. Personally, I’m just proud that an Australian organisation is creating debate around the world. And I’m flattered that our ideas are entering the ‘zeitgeist’ and finding traction elsewhere.
Fortunately, the list of examples and controversial claims above also serve my purpose, by not-so serendipitously leading me back to the opening question.
If new technologies are making it easier for anyone to uncover and apply the ideas of others from around the globe, if Google is providing us with the answer to almost any question we can ask, if technology is overcoming the need to think cognitively or make personal deductions… is Google making us dumb?
The debate is obviously more complex than that.
Atlantic contributor Nicholas Carr makes the observation that, because media are not just passive channels of information, because they supply the stuff of thought, they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at our 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. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski,” he says.
At least, I think that was his main bone. I was too busy checking out a link on sea-turtles.
The Monthly’s Haig seems to be more upset at the effectiveness of Google as a tool for plagiarism and its ability to effectively convey misinformation.
Ultimately, a good angle is a memorable angle, just as surely as a good idea is infectious. And it’s impossible to prevent a good angle/idea from turning viral.
Personally, I doubt that any concept, cover story or angle that has appeared in any magazine, including Anthill, has ever been truly original, untouched by outside forces, and Google is not to blame. Quite simply, an idea can’t percolate in a vacuum (and all publishers rely on cultural mores, means and schemas to connect with our readers).
This statement includes the examples given above (from Google’s effect to business disasters and apple motifs). Yes, it might shock and amaze, but Anthill was not the first to focus on disasters, use apples on our cover or write about innovation.
The challenge is making sure that new thinkers understand the distinction between plagiarism and the proper means of sharing ideas - giving credit where credit’s due.
Is Google making us dumb? I suspect that Carr is right in one sense. It is changing the way we think and analyse information, but possibly it’s doing so in a way that’s no different to the effect the mass production of books had on the way we reason and communicate.
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.”
Fortunately, I don’t need to be scholar in Greek history to know this tid bit of information. I just applied an example provided by Carr, verbatim (I plagiarised with credit, or is that an oxymoron?).
Like writing, books and libraries, Google and other search engines (and the web) are opening us up to perspectives and experiences, many of which were previously inaccessible and impossible to share cheaply .
So, to mashup an old quote with a new setting (searched and found using Google, edited and manipulated using my wee, human brain)…
If we can all see further from the shoulders of giants, I’m just grateful for the comfy perch, steering system and dashboard that search engines have provided.
And I, for one, feel smarter for it.
*UPDATE: It seems that the battle of “similar” ideas is not confined to print publications, with Channel Seven now being accused of ripping off an Apple iPod TVC with its new TiVo promotions. Seven’s riposte? “There’s no copyright in an idea.”
July 15th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Google was not designed to make people smarter or dumber - just more efficient - so the main problem comes when people feel that it is making them smarter because then it is often making them dumber.
Google does make us smarter because:
1. it gives us rapid access to data and information using search and hypertext, thus saving us the trouble of keeping low priority or rapidly changing information in our heads.
2. it saves us time searching for information so we have more time to use our brains understanding and processing information (provided we know how).
BUT, indirectly, Google does makes many of us dumber because:
1. it gives many (naive) people the mistaken impression that data is information; that information is knowledge; and that facts are true - not just people’s opinions.
2. Google/hypertexting does not help people process data, facts and information into knowledge - knowledge is something that is constructed by people as they try to incorporate new ideas into their minds, assess them, and then relate them to the rest of their knowledge.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:19 am
I go with Chris. It depends on how you use Google, and what experince you have in searching accurately. I frequently use Google Scholar to get the scope of academic( usually) work in a partiulcar area. I can easily find the main players, where they publish and who cites them. Many moons ago, when doing literature searches, I would sit for sometime with a librarian in a special room, discuss the search and what papers I would expect to see as “markers” of search term accuracy and then go “on-line”. The cost was significant, and we’d stop frequently if the results ( a paper print out) were not strong enough. I would then sit in another section of the library and comb through the journals, maybe write letters to authors etc.
So Google is what you make of it. Never use Google maps as “truth” - at least not when the journey is off the main routes…..
If something IS making us STOOPID its email ! When people sitting one room apart use email to “communicate” ( not transfer documents) we have a real problem.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I know I for one feel smarter because of it, and not just when I’m around a computer/mobile with internet.
Throughout the course of a day you’ll undoubtedly come across a few things that you’d like to know a little more about or questions which you’d like the answers to. Before the internet and Google, maybe you’d have filed those away as something to look into later, maybe to ask someone more knowledgable or look it up in a library etc.
You may or may not have gotten around to doing this and probably forgot after a while as more pressing things came to mind.
These days, however, we have the tools to find the answers and research things immediately. Sure, it means we don’t necessarily mean we have to mine through information and research like we used to, but the mere fact that we can do it on the spot means that we probably will, and we will have the answer to that question.
As a result, we are building up a much more comprehensive base of knowledge in our brains and are far more qualified to deduce things intelligently with that knowledge as a tool.
And I personally still do as much research as I used to. (I don’t research professionaly BTW, I just get passionate about things and research them for myself). There’s a lot of things that I may just quickly Google or Wikipedia for instance, but there are also a lot of things where perhaps the topic isn’t so easy to Google, is more in complicated/in-depth, and requires a bit of delving. Google still becomes a useful tool for this though.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Great comments all.
I have a life goal to learn something new each day, preferably in an area unrelated to the things I usually focus on. Naturally, my ultimate aim is omniscience. In order to achieve that I plan to live a very long time
Each day I set aside a few minutes tp pursue the topic du jour, and start with Google and Wikipedia. So like David above, Google contributes to my feeling smarter.
In work, in conversation, in life in general, I google whenever a question arises. Who sang that song? How long was the Hundred Years War? Who wrote Beethoven’s 5th Symphony? With the web available on my laptop, PDA, mobile phone I seldom let a question go unanswered, a thought incomplete. If in a moment’s doubt, Google.
But Google can also enforce mediocrity by giving people rapid access to the same old answers. The lazy searcher will accept the first answer found, and dig no deeper. So ideas can appear oversimple, and popular point of view can be legitimised, however wrong. For example, if the lazy researcher were to Google ‘iridology’, and read only the page of results, not any of the actual entries, they may come to the conclusion that there was a lot of support for the idea, even though it’s a lot of absolute nonsense. They’d have to dig deeper and actually read the Wikipedia article some way in before getting to the truth that there is no evidence whatsoever in favour of it. Even then, the number of prominent sites in favour of it far outweighs those which expose it for what it is.
Google also demonstrates the growing gulf between the information empowered and disempowered on this planet. The good researcher can access vast amounts of information and if they have the tools, turn that information into knowledge. Clearly you need some knowledge in order to turn raw information into more knowledge. The less good researcher may interpret the same data erroneously but suppose themselves to be correct. And the vast number of people in the world who haven’t got running water and electricity, let alone access to Google, are relatively less empowered than ever. As knowledge is increasingly the most important global commodity, it behooves us to use our information wisely and responsibly.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I think it’s overly simplistic to assert that Google is making us stoopid (I have the copy of The Atlantic in front of me as I type). Whilst I agree that Google helps the curious and the lazy, I can’t help but feel that libraries do the same…
April’s edition of Harvard Business Review ran a brilliant article on Google’s innovation ecosystem. This is well worth a read.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
One more thing James, The Atlantic is a great magazine. I’ve been a subscriber for a while and thoroughly recommend it.
Just as I thoroughly recommend Anthill Magazine (2 gift subscriptions and counting…)
July 17th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
“The Dichotomy of the Information Age - Humanity as a collective is becoming more sophisticated, more intelligent and more productive, however, as individuals we are just becoming all stupiderer and stuff…” -
July 18th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Hi Matthew,
Great quote. I went looking for its owner and could only come up with “Xythan”. I then went looking to find out who Xythan is and discovered in Wookipedia (a Star Wars Wiki)…
“Xythan force shields were a type of shield newly created by Cestus Cybernetics in 21 BBY. It absorbed and returned all energy, including the blade of a lightsaber.”
These Xythanians (or Xythani) must be a smart race to create a weapon to defeat a lightsaber AND come up with great quotes! But my curiosity was not yet quenched.
With a bit of further searching, I discovered that Xythan is also the alias a frequent of a frequent forum correspondent on Zgeek.com, whose current residence is… “Melbourne, Australia, Earth, Sol, Milky Way, The Universe.”
Whether this information is ever useful to me, it doesn’t matter. I feel so much more empowered for it (and glad to know that Star Wars can find a home in almost any topical discussion). I guess that also raises the question: Is it making us Sticky Beaks too?
James
July 18th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Google helps BRAND STOOPID companies and consumers to come together.
With regards to e-commerce I think Google has two main functions.
1. help companies who don’t have a brand lead strategy be found. For example if I’m looking for a job i just go to seek.com.au, i don’t search Google for “plumber Melbourne”.
Therefore Google is usefull for smaller employment sites that are still in the process of building their brand awareness in consumers minds or helps sites whos’ ambition is to survive on search engine traffic alone.
2. Secondly Google is usefull for well know brands who have failed to secure the most simple and memorable URLs.
For example: ideally I’d just type in anthill.com or anthill.com.au, though given those names are gone, I would then go to Google and type in anthill magazine.
So I’d argue that Google is not making us Stoopid - but rather helping brand the Stoopid (so to speak) to get together. And a very usefull result indeed.
Steve