I Did Not Google This Article (Blog Five)

"Is Google really making us stupid?"....Yes. And yes. I remember when I was a kid, I would read books all the time. I would remember things. I would impress my friends by being the most factual and up to date. And today? It's not the same. I often struggle reading chapters of a book at a time, and if I need to be impressive, I just look it up on my phone. But there are benefits to this as well. I mean, we have our hands dipped in the fountain of limitless knowledge. Anything we ever needed to know is at our fingertips (of course with a few good keywords). But there is only room for so much, and that's where the problem lies. As we build up this seemingly shorter and more meaningless facts, we find ourselves forgetting how to just remember big bits of text for a test. But Google isn't just the trouble maker in this one...

Go ahead and sit through all 53 minutes of this...I dare you.

Looks a lot different then the Sesame Street I remember. Because when I hooked onto the long running program Sesame Street, it looked a little like this...and because I'm  nice, you only have to watch till minute 5!

That classroom has a great view..

And you know what? Now that I watch it today, that even seems boring! It was a constant game of trying to play keep me up. The kids at the time would get bored of the old style, so the show was constantly attempting to appeal to the kids at the time. Images got faster, colors became brighter, segments were shorter...it seems like a lot for a kid to take in. Not really. The minds of the children warp and change to fit what is being put up on the screen. We now live in an age where I personally can't stand any new kids shows. Too many colors, the images move too fast, the uh...oh, we've done this already. But back to Google...our adult Sesame Street. 

In the article "Is Google really making us stupid?" Carr says a statement that stuck with me:

"I think I know what's going on. For more than a decade

now, I've been spending a lot of time online, searching and

surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of

the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a

writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or

periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes.

A few Google searcbes, some quick clicks on hyperlinks,

and I've got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after."

And every time we go online and add to this database, the information is just easier for people to find. Making it just that much easier for us to find it. And making the encyclopedia and book searching era a thing of the past, and making us sacrifice our memory retention for this vast knowledge. I agree with Carr on this one. But I can't say I don't love it. I love having this vast knowledge at the tips of my fingers. I love having the ability to just know anything at any given time. But then my brain chimes in and says that I really should miss my ability to read novels and search books. It's a hard thing to balance. Will we ever completely forget? Yes. But our knowledge will be vast, and we will be able to know anything there was ever to know. I like those chances. And hey, maybe all those Kindle's will actually make us like reading again!

Did you make it to the bottom? Did you? No...without skimming.

Source: 

Carr, Nicholas. ""Is Google Making Us Stupid?"." Atlantic. August 2008: 57. Print.