Is Google dumbing us down? No definately not!
I’ve deliberately waited a long while before commenting on the blog post Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr because I wanted to have a long hard think about what I wanted to say about it. He has certainly raised a point which I think needs commenting upon.
But I think before I go any further that I have to say it’s extremely unfair to make Google the target of the article. It seems to me that if anyone attacks the internet these days, it’s mostly Google that they go after. Google and the internet seem to be one and the same these days and that’s just downright ludicrous. Why isn’t the article called “Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?“. Maybe because it isn’t eye-catching enough? Doesn’t bring in enough pageviews? But throw the “G” word in there and suddenly everybody comes running because everybody just LOVES a good Google lynching don’t they? Google has become the whipping boy of the internet and I think that trend has to stop right now because it is downright ridiculous. Why do the other search engines get a free ride while Google gets strapped to the rack? Where’s the Yahoo vilification? Where’s the “How Yahoo Is Making My Kid A Total Buffoon” article? Or the “I used Ask.com and my IQ dropped 50 points!“. But no, it’s always “let’s slap Google about some more”. It’s the 1990’s all over again when it was fashionable to slap Bill Gates about because he was the richest kid on the block. Now that hate (or jealousy) is being transferred to Sergey and Larry.
OK, back to the article. If you haven’t read it (or you decided you it was too long and stopped), the basic premise is that the internet is changing the way that we think and the way that we read. We are used to instant information and instant gratification. If we want something, we can get it immediately by going online to Google or another search engine and searching for it. So we are less inclined to read long difficult texts and passages and searching for what we need in the old fashioned traditional sense (i.e. using your brain to interpret the meaning of a sentence). We are now more inclined to skim, to browse, to surf (I actually hate that word). In a nutshell, we have stopped reading books the way we used to - and the internet is to blame.
Well Mr Carr, sorry I have to mostly disagree with you. I have always been a speed reader, even since I was a young child. My teachers were always suspicious of me handing in book reports days ahead of schedule and they would never believe that I had read the whole book. Ever since the internet arrived on the scene, I have continued to skim articles simply because the flow of information is simply too damn much! But to solely blame the internet for this behaviour? No, this is perhaps a bit much. People skim and browse to save time. A lot of people skim and browse because they have no other choice. They have little time and demanding jobs that don’t give them the luxury to sit down in comfortable armchairs, wearing a smoking jacket with comfy slippers, with cups of coffee and a big newspaper or book to read properly. But if they DID have the time, I bet they would love to sit and read properly. I’ve always wanted a smoking jacket.
Every day, I sit and go through 1000-1500 RSS stories before writing my blog stories. Now could I possibly read every single one? Of course not, that would take too long. So I have to skim. But when the day is over and it’s time for relaxation, you will find me on the bed, surrounded by books reading away.
So not every social problem in life can be blamed on Google and the internet. Live with it. The world is changing, people’s lives are getting more and more hectic and the media is changing and adapting to meet people’s needs. Better that they get their news in bite size chunks than no news at all. Better that they skim an article and get the basics than not read the article at all. Better that they read one book a month than not read a book at all.
In life you take what you get.
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