I find myself on Google everyday, sometimes even more than once. I love the easy access to tons of information and the ability to have any kind of question answered in a heartbeat. I never once thought how getting information that fast would ever be at a disadvantage to me. This article by Nicholas Carr made me question if getting tons of information quickly without lifting a finger was really the best way to learn and expand my knowledge of topics. Clive Thompson explains this by saying, " The perfect recall of silicon memory can be enormous boon to thinking.... but that boon comes at a price". "They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. Clive Thompson believes that "the Net is chipping away his capacity for concentration and contemplation". I can relate to both of these, when I read articles on the internet, I tend to lose focus a lot faster since I am just reading random information and didn't have to spend any time finding it. Compared to reading a book, I have to find the right chapter to lead me to the best information which may not directly answer my question but give some background to the topic.
Though Google gives extraordinary amounts of information in a matter of seconds, I would have to agree that Google is making us stupid. Looking back at all my research projects from fourth grade and below, I used books and hardly any internet sources. I can remember spending so much time flipping pages through numerous books to find a small piece of information for my papers. The research process was much longer, but the positive was that I could trust that the information I was gathering was true. I could site the source easily and see all the sources that were involved in the making of the book. Also, by using a book, I gained other learning skills. I could navigate through chapters by looking at the table of contents. I could use clues from certain pieces of information to lead me to other ideas for my papers as well. At times when I would use Google, I would get more than 50,000 results. How is it possible to trust all those results and find the best one? Also, some of those online articles would be more than 20 pages long without any guidance of a table of contents to find the information I wanted. Many times I would find myself just skimming the pages until something jumped out at me. Bruce Friedman had this same problem, "I've lost the ability to do that. Even blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it".
Overall, Google does provide a great amount of information in a short period, but that information is just given to you after a simple sentence in the search bar. I think it's time to bring back the totally reliable books and encyclopedias for research. Not only will knowledge on subjects broaden but the skill of navigation too.
Gabbie, you make some very valid points. It was interesting to me how you compared researching in a book, like we used to, to researching on Google. It is true that they are very different ways of garnering information. It is overwhelming to have millions of results on Google when you are looking for just one specific piece of information. However, this vast quantity of results can also be helpful. Many times, I find myself looking through article after article trying to find something useful to use. If I were researching in a library, eventually I would run out of options. With Google, I have a virtually inexhaustible source of articles and web pages at my disposal. So, while it is definitely a different method of researching, I don't know that I would call one "better" than the other.
ReplyDeleteGabbie, I loved your take on this article! I thought it was very interesting that in this modern age of technology where everyone has smart phones and laptops, you want to go back to books. I agree with you that researching with books can be very beneficial, and I I also remember in elementary school and middle school doing research projects with solely books. While this type of research was very helpful for developing reading comprehension, focusing on navigating through books, and understanding reliability of books, these projects also took weeks to finish. Not only was the actual research project lengthy, but you also couldn't rely on getting a book right away or even picking out the right books, plus some of the information might have been outdated. For this reason, I think using Google is extremely helpful. Although you might be able to trust book's information more easily, you could also be trusting out of date information. In particular, science is always changing, so Google can provide articles about developments made a week ago, whereas books take a long time to write and publish, by which time new information could have been found. I believe that neither Google nor books are better research options or provide full research coverage, unless combined. Great job Gabbie, I loved your views on this!
ReplyDeleteGreat job Gabbie. I really enjoyed reading your response, especially in the second paragraph. You went back to the past when we had to use books to do our research projects. This was an excellent example to use, because it then let you go into further detail on the past. I found it interesting when you wrote, "The research process was much longer, but the positive was that I could trust that the information I was gathering was true. I could site the source easily and see all the sources that were involved in the making of the book. Also, by using a book, I gained other learning skills. I could navigate through chapters by looking at the table of contents. I could use clues from certain pieces of information to lead me to other ideas for my papers as well." This collection of sentences was awesome. I could easily relate to this, and it brought me back to the good old days.
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