Google’s mission statement is “to
organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and
useful.” (Carss, 62) This is a great idea which was brainstormed from very
intelligent people with great ideas to further technology as a whole. But when has technology gone too far with
changing our ideas of “this blog is too long to read” or “I don’t want to type
this paper, it will take forever!” The article “Is Google making you stupid?”
really made me step back and think, whoa this could actually be happening to
me. I am a culprit of this theory of
thinking a one page blog is too long to read and moving onto the next one. I also participate in reading just the first
few sentences of a paragraph and then moving onto the next source of
information. Many people seem to also
find themselves skimming the information they are reading because they feel it
is way to long to read in full. Back in
the day, scholars would have to go to the library and read long chapters of
books to get information, and now we can just type a few words into a search
engine and get a million answers. But we
feel typing these few words into Google and reading a short blip of information
is way to much reading. Mr. Carr’s is
completely right when he talks about this skimming problem our generation seems
to have these days. Not only are we
missing out on important information, but we are missing learning opportunities
for ourselves. “Attitudes affecting college students, preferences for distant
learning”, an article about college students being more concerned with grades
than their actual learning process as a student to further their life knowledge
discusses how technology interferes with learning in the classroom and
attitudes towards learning to be a better student. These students admitted to
skimming Google sites instead of reading in order to create a better paper to
get a better grade.
Carr’s attitude towards technology is
correct and there is evidence to show college students and even adults only
skim and do not pay attention to the whole blog in order to just get the
technology they need to get their tasks done.
It is crazy how in this generation we feel reading a 4 paragraph blog is
too long in order to gather a good amount of information.
Katz,
Y. J. "Attitudes Affecting College Students' Preferences for Distance
Learning - Katz - 2002 - Journal of Computer Assisted Learning." Wiley
Online Library. 28 Feb. 2002. Web. 05 Feb. 2012. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.0266-4909.2001.00202.x/full>.
Hey court I really like your post about is google making us stupid? I agree that the main problem is that people just skim the information instead of delving deep in to the infromation or looking at multiple sources. Do you think that there is any way we can as a culture change this problem? Or is there anyway we can change this for the future? Overall Great Job:)
ReplyDeleteCourtney, I really enjoyed your post, especially how you included Google's mission statement, because I thought it was interesting to learn exactly what it says. I also like how you mentioned the issue of college students being more concerned with getting good grades rather than actually learning the information. Personally, I am concerned with getting good grades, and I sometimes worry that I don't take the time to actually learn the information, which could potentially be a problem for me in the future when I actually need to apply what I learned.
ReplyDeletetl;dr
ReplyDelete...kidding, of course. But the existence of that acronym (too long; didn't read) is somewhat proof of concept. However, I believe the technology should always bow to us, and the best solution would be to remake the way we present information. Let's face it: Text is too old school for most people nowadays.