I’ve just read 2 great articles (and one OK article written as a response).
First read Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Then read Jamais Cascio’s Get Smarter (Is Google actually making us smarter?)
Finally, if you’re mad keen, read Andrew Brown’s response – Google isn’t making us dumb – or smart. That’s the problem.
I read and enjoyed all three articles. And after reading them I got to think about what I learned drinking tea. I drink yogi tea. It’s strong, spicy stuff, that takes 7 minutes to brew. I usually manage to squeeze a couple of cups from each bag.
There’s a label attached to each yogi teabag. Each label is printed with a short saying, designed to enlighten the casual tea drinker. I’ve always read my teabag and meditated briefly over the sayings – they repeat so you get to know them. Then one day I read the following saying for about the hundredth time:
“We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
And suddenly, like a punch to my gut, I got it. I was breathless for a few moments. I realised just what that saying meant. I got right inside the skin of it. It wasn’t something the teabag taught me – it was something I understood. Something I felt. It changed something inside me.
You can know or learn facts. Google will always know a lot more facts than you, and be better at distributing them.
You can host knowledge. Google will always host more knowledge than you. But there’s an outside chance you might be better at passing your knowledge directly on to an individual.
But so far, where Google fails, is in understanding. For now, only we can do this.
What will happen the day that Google begins to understand?
“I am a digital being having a human experience.”
That’ll be really something.
