Nick Carr: Is Google making us stupid? | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by

[jason]

Slashdot | Is Google Making Us Stupid?leads to the fuller article Nick Carr: Is Google making us stupid? | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET News.com that talks about something not even available yet on the net, and they have to ask if google makes us stupid. Perhaps it does.

If Google is responsible for making us thing that data is information, information is knowledge and knowledge is wisdom… and wisdom is judicious action.

Google cannot make us stupid any more than a book can. Google does not find information for us if we don’t know what we’re looking for, any more than a library can. And the library has the added advantage of allowing us to surf the stacks, something google can’t do, yet. I wish it could. Does Wikipedia, the OED or Encyclopedia Britannica make us stupid? Does learning how to learn, vs memorizing facts, make us stupid? Hmmmm… perhaps it does, and I’m a total idiot. But then again, perhaps not.

Does the lazy culture of instant gratification make us stupid… well, probably. And this is because we take what is immediate and easy rather than struggle for more interesting and more difficult goals. But google doesn’t cause that… schools, media, industry all do that more. Google helps the lazy remain lazy perhaps, but I don’t see them adding to it.

I read books. I love books. I love pen and paper. I use it. And I love google… especially advanced functions. What do you do?