Google Gone Wrong

            The “Information Overload” podcast supports the “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” article, showing that our society has become excessively reliant upon technology. The podcast describes that for just about everything, we can find video representations and online explanations; whereas, in the past, someone would have shown us how to do something or we could have found the answers to life’s ponderings in libraries full of books.

            From here, we must wonder how accurate our findings from the Internet actually are. Do we know from where exactly our online resources come, and are they accurate depictions of fact? Using Google as an academic or educated source-finder is fine; but, as depicted in the cartoon below, we must be sure that everyone is aware of finding the differences between true and false.

            The initial intent of Google was to be a sort of online host of information, acting as an Internet library. It has since gone down quite a different path, including information and sources of all sorts, many of which are wishy-washy in their reliability.

            In the podcast, historian Lisa Jardine solidified my perception that Google is, in fact, making us stupid. We’ve given up on trying to find accurate information that will inform us and increase our knowledge base. Rather, we pick out one or two bits of “news” and automatically assume it to be fact, rather than searching for deeper proof that the source is exactly what is proclaims to be.

            I’m not saying the Internet consists of a bunch of useless information. I’m simply playing the Devil’s advocate and suggesting that we take a deeper look into each tidbit of data we pull from the worldwide web.

Source:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx498kWIiEt0lNffvCzhChNvwgyYBnol_8pKL3Ixhe1dx2owaN3bMFNrxJkmHAz6sOT0iqRAMXG30jpuEoT9h_zHqiTbIQPWTyT5Cvq67MwxbFCS4C4ppym9uKnSKH3RrH16xk4GkJB_Q/s1600/061013_internet_citing1.gif

Information overload

Ms. Jardine’s podcast does not make me change my stance that Mr. Carr’s article was speculator and lacked evidence to support its claims. I still think Google is not what is making us stupid. However, Ms. Jardine’s podcast changed the way I think about what information overload does to us.
The internet does seem like it is a giant organizing system for our society that just has too much information to retain otherwise. This is the main positive people in the class said about technology; it is easy to access a ton of information. Ms. Jardine’s podcast further enhanced my appreciation of that positive of technology because I see it now as a file system.
For example, my internship supervisor has a rolodex on his desk. I once saw him sift through that thing for about 20 minutes, until he realized he no longer had the contact he was looking for. Recalling that information would be so much easier for him if he had it on the internet. So I would disagree with the notion that information overload is a bad thing. We go to a Liberal Arts college and one of the principles of such is a well-rounded base of knowledge. The internet can help with that.
The one concern that Ms. Jardine did bring up that caused me to be alarmed over the negative effects technology has on our society is when she made the statement, “If we are going to make sense, for posterity, of today’s information saturated present, one of the things we will have to do is to learn how to prune the evidence and ultimately, what to forget.” This is a concern for me because I feel as if there are certain skills, not information, that should not be forgotten. It is not that people are becoming incapable of doing certain things like Carr said, it is more that certain social, etiquette and public sensitivity skills are not being developed. I still believe we can salvage those skills and they are not lost forever like Carr suggests.
It may not be such a bad thing that we lose certain skills. Maybe those socials skills or whatnot will become obsolete. Unless there is an Apocalypse we should always be able to look certain things up on the internet.
Ultimately, even if technology is ruining our society because of information overload, lack of development of social skills or shortened attention span, there may be nothing to stop it. Marshall McLuhan believes in “technological determinism,” or the belief that technology changes society as much as society changes technology. Therefore, at this point, the technology has as much power over us and we are helpless to stop it.
In conclusion, I still do not believe Mr. Carr’s perspective and I think Ms. Jardine’s perceptions are much more relevant to what technology is doing to our society. Either way, because of technological determinism, what can we do?

The internet is a library

        The mere title of Mr. Carr’s article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, has a negative connotation. As his audience, I felt as though he was leading us down a path to convince us that aspects of modern technology are detrimental to our well being, specifically, the wealth of information at our fingertips. However, after hearing Ms. Jardine’s podcast, I began to stray from the path that Mr. Carr led me down.
          I began to see the internet as a giant library, that is a medium to preserve the vast amounts of information that the human race has acquired over time. As Ms. Jardine mentioned, there are two things that have scared us the most: the worry of not being able to learn everything and the worry of losing resources. I believe the internet and modern technology have alleviated these worries by allowing the curious and the intellectual to utilize the resources at their fingertips and learn what they want to learn. It is also a vast reservoir for information. Instead of just a single book or oral presentation that may have been the sole source of information in times past.
          However, this wealth of information, distributed by governments, corporations and individuals, can also present serious issues. The term ‘information overload,’ first coined by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock, refers to one’s inability to process information as a result of being overwhelmed by its excess. In other words, if you go to the store looking to buy something that you don’t know much about, and there are dozens and dozens of different brands and types, you are going to be very overwhelmed by all of the options. However, as we have discussed before, I believe that if people utilize the internet, and Google, appropriately, they can be “smart shoppers” and find the correct information, be curious, and smarter.


Schumpeter, . "Too much information: How to cope with data overload." The Economist. http://www.economist.com/node/18895468.

The Renaissance Man

     In historian Lisa Jardine's podcast, she recounts the history of information storing, keeping today's methods close for comparison. There are a few stark contrasts- one being the teams of scribes, barely keeping up with new knowledge versus the world wide web, a world where anyone can contribute and finding the right information in the sea of web pages is the issue. It is clear that we have overcome the problem of not being able to record everything for the trade-off of having whatever information we need so long as we know where to look. Google's estimated index of the web alone has reached upwards of billions of web pages alone. To have all of that information is surely powerful, but it brings with it an important consideration.

Info Overload

After hearing Ms. Jardine’s podcast, I do believe I still feel firm in my stance about Mr. Carr’s article.
Although, there are parts of the podcast, that I do agree with, I still feel as though Mr. Carr was write in his
argument.
Ms. Jardine put alot of emphasis on the fact that storing information is a task, and it is risky. However, I do think that with hardrives and other materials today, we can, in a way, protect and store information forever. Also, instead of spending a couple hours searching for something in a library, I can have it on my computer in the click of a button. We have most certainly been spoiled by technology.
However, the point that I think Mr. Carr is trying to make, is not that we are becoming stupid, but that we are not as smart as we could be perhaps. Just we exercise our bodies makes us stronger, exercising our brains makes us smarter.  “Mental stimulation improves brain function and actually protects against cognitive decline,” (Resources for Science Learning, www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html, 2012). Now think, do you have to use your mind more to search something on the internet, or to look something up in a library? Now, maybe Carr is suggesting that by not exercising our brain vigorously, by choosing the harder option, we are not achieving our full mental potential, thus causing us not to be as smart.
In conclusion, I do believe that the internet is a much more efficient way of storing information, but I do also believe that it isn’t making us work hard enough. And maybe there wouldn’t be a difference, maybe we are better off, but maybe not.

Work's Cited


http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html

Information Overload= Overwhelming!

The amount of information that early scholars had access to many years ago was overwhelming. Now with the internet we seem to have an endless amount of information that we can access with a click of a mouse.  I would say that is pretty overwhelming. Steve Mollman from CNN states that it is normal to feel overwhelm by the sheer volume of information that can be accessible on the Internet. Sites are competing for the reader’s attention—Facebook, Twitter.

Preserving Literature

After listening to the A Point of View podcast from BBC I began doing something in regards to Mr. Carr’s Is Google Making us Stupid.  The podcast in my opinion explains the needs for a safeguard of all information.  Mrs. Jardine explained papers and texts as “vulnerable” to being burned and destroyed without any backup copy.  This of course would mean a loss of crucial information, documentation etc.

            Listening solidified my view of Carr’s article furthermore.  The Internet allows a plethora of information while being able to securely keep in safe hands.  Crucial works of literature can be saved to hard drives where they are saved forever.  After noting in the podcast that there was too much literature to possibly keep safe back in the day we now have places that we can store it and continually update it.  The risk of losing important information over the Internet is much smaller then having a library burned, destroying all of its contents. 

            It was clear in the podcast that fear of losing the information was more significant than the information we have today making us “stupid”.  Take for example her sock explanation.  If we had written works on how to properly mend socks they would be hard to find and could have been destroyed overtime.  However, being able to upload the information to the Internet allows people to access a simple tutorial on how to properly go about fixing a sock.  This information is now easier than ever to find which in my opinion makes us smarter by Goggling, rather than having to spend countless hours finding the answer.

            In my honest opinion I don’t see the Internet ever making us “stupid”, lazy? Yes but not less intelligent.  We, thanks to technology have access to anything we need with a simple click of the mouse, how would we attaint the same information if it had be burned centuries ago? We would not be able to. Take for instance IBM's new technology prototype, it is enabling the British Library to archive and safeguard large quantities of Web pages, and then unlock the virtual door to its archives for generations to come.  This secures reputable information now available by typing what we desire into Google, for eternity.

Lilla, Karen. "IBM Helps British Library Preserve Information on the Web for

     Generations to Come." IBM.com. IBM, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2012.

     <http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/29518.wss>.

Information Overloaded

        At the end of this podcast, I came to realize that it did not change my mind about Mr. Carr's thoughts from his article at all. I reflected back on what my opinion was, which was that I strongly agreed with Mr. Carr and several points that he made. Listening to this podcast did not sway me in any way to change my stance on what I believe about the Internet.

Info Overload

Lisa Jardine’s podcast solidifies my stance about Mr. Carr’s thoughts.  Google probably is making us stupid, but we are victims of Google through no fault but our own!  I almost feel like what Jardine was saying makes Carr’s argument okay.  Sure, Google is making us stupid, but we have to rely on it anyway, because there’s no possible way to remember every bit of information we ever receive. 

Technology is it good or bad for our reasearch skills?

            After reading an article about how because of the internet we are now lazy and spend less time actually looking up information than we did I listened to a pod cast that talked about how technology is just a tool that helps deliver information to the masses. I feel that both of these articles hold good points but both lack some things. In the first article Carr talks about how people don’t delve deep enough in to the information and that they just skim the surface of the articles looking for blurbs about information. Carr fells that technology is to blame for this skimming problem. He feels that since all of this information is so easy to access people only want what shows up to them first. Contrarily the BBC pod cast talks about how it is technology which gives us the opportunity in order to gather new information.  Jardine feels that since the beginning of time we have been using and fighting over the ability to control the technology which allows people to access information. The reason that people fight over information is because when people have knowledge they become powerful. One example of this is when Jardine talks about how the great library at the castle of Heidelberg was destroyed and the contents were taken to the Vatican. She talked about how technology has also been used to make information more accessible. First it was the invention of a cataloged library and then it was the invention of the internet which helped to get this massive amount of information to the masses. Jardine also feels that since the advent of the internet scholarly documents are much safer than they ever were before because you don’t have to worry about the hard paper copies being damaged.  After reading and listening to both I agree more with the pod cast of Jardine. I fell that technology should be used as a tool in order for the masses to have the ability to and to access the information that is needed for their studies. Carr does though have a valid point by saying that since there is an abundance of information skimming does happen.  So I have an alternate solution in order to remedy the problem of information skimming while still advocating the internet as a way to access information. People need to be taught the proper way to use the internet both for pleasure when skimming is okay and for scholarly research where you need to delve deeper in to the information than people usually do. By doing this you still can use the huge abundance of information that is on the internet, but you will be able to get more out of it.

Bibliography

Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making us Stupid?." Atlantic. July 2008: 56-69. Print

Bingeing on Information?

            In her segment entitled “Information Overload,” on the BBC Radio 4 program A Point of View, historian Lisa Jardine examines the trials and tribulations of an increasing ability to record and preserve huge amounts of information for future generations over the past few hundred years. In the article we examined last week, Nicholas Carr argued that the internet is flooding us with more information than we can usefully handle, and that this constant stream of information is breaking down our ability to focus and extract useful things from the flow. Ms. Jardine makes a similar argument; however, she also shows that this is not a problem that is unique to the internet, and in fact has been examined since the invention of the printing press for a solution.

From Brains to Bytes

"Knowledge is hard to lose these days". This is a quote from the podcast that really stayed with me. We might not know what something means, but with one click of the mouse we can definitely find it's meaning. 

Change is Good

In her podcast, Lisa Jardine explained that many early scholars were overwhelmed with the amount of information that was available to them. They felt responsible for knowing certain things, but felt that they didn’t have enough time to soak up all the information.

Skimming is a time saver!!

Ms. Jardine’s approach does not change my mind on Mr. Carrs theory because from personal experience as a college student and asking some of my friends around campus, I know skimming is becoming more popular than reading itself.  I believe the act of skimming over reading depends on many things other than the love for reading.  Amount of time in one’s daily lives, money and the amount of schoolwork oriented reading you have.