I remember how excited I was to have my very own library card when I was a kid. I could pick out whatever books I wanted, take them home, and enjoy them at my leisure. As I got older, that card allowed me to do research for homework topics and get study aids for exams.
Admittedly, as an adult, I don't use my library card much anymore, preferring to look up information on the Internet, usually starting with a Google search.
Nicolas Carr asked the question, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in the July/August 2008 edition of The Atlantic. True, Google is certainly changing the way people look for information. But is this means of searching for information, and the ways in which it has changed how we approach a problem that needs solving, made us stupid? Well...
As Carr explains in his article, Google is not the first paradigm-shifter to hit humankind. The printing press caused an uproar as information could then be disseminated among the masses cheaply and quickly. The moving picture did a lot of damage to the book publishing industry. Television tried to kill off books, radio, and movies. And the Internet is putting quite a dent into the media that came before it.
And an awful lot of what is available through the Internet is crap. But so are a lot of books I could check out from the library. Television? Plenty of crap for everyone.
Google has given us the means by which we can sort through the crap, and get the information we're looking for in a couple of minutes, without having to drive downtown, find parking, search for books, dig through the books, and after an hour or two, discover when the best time to plant sunflowers is. Google can also help us find books that might be worth reading.
The point here is that Google itself is not making us stupid. It may be changing the way we get our information, but it is still up to us whether to use the information in a smart or stupid way. Stupidity is not caused by a medium. As Marshall McLuhan said, roughly, any medium is merely an extension of ourselves. What we do with the medium determines whether we are stupid or not.
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