After listening to A Point of View, I thought back to an earlier blog post about the documentary “Future Shock” and how people have this mentality that too much is happening too fast for our minds to comprehend the information. Lisa Jardine provided us with the history of how information has been processed by starting with the printing press and explaining the negativity that ensued when people started to use books. One statement that stood out to me was “too many books, too little time.” I think that this is a different question that we should be asking is whether or not these resources are helping or harming us as a society. To me, this goes beyond Nicholas Carr’s argument about Google changing our thinking patterns. Along with my previous blog post, I agree that Google is causing a shift in our deep thinking and can be a distraction. However, I feel that Google is not problematic in that we are now able to access information that is unknown.
I think that our approach of using Google should change but I think that as a potential source of useful information we can rely on Google to find facts or discover new knowledge that we did not know before. Granted, I understand how some can see using the Internet as a primary source of information is bad. Where there are multiple issues with looking at blogs, online articles, or Wikipedia, the approach to using search engines have to change. The fact remains that using Google has been very beneficial to modern day society and is without a doubt one of the most popular search engines to use to find information. As an article in CNN explains, other search engines are trying to emulate Google.
“Google, of course, remains the search king. Recent efforts to revolutionize Web searching have failed to unseat the dominant California company, which captures nearly 64 percent of U.S. online searches, according to comScore. Tech start-ups like Cuil, which billed itself as more powerful than Google, and Wikia, which relied on a community to rank search results rather than a math formula, have largely faded away after some initial buzz,” (Sutter, CNN).
For now, it is safe to say that using Google has helped progress how people can get information from a variety of different places. I think that as time goes on people will be able to refine that information even more. In addition, seen in the video, people will still use Google because of its accessibility and ease.
To
go back to my blog post on last week, I will defend that the Internet is a big distraction
and causing for a shorter attention span. Yet, if people held this view
presented in Jardine’s podcast, information would never have been kept up with
and eventually through time we would have to store the information somewhere. I
do think that it is more of is our society ready for a change compared to how
much can our society handle? Like Harry Potter, we have a desire to want to
know more about a particular topic because we are curious by nature. Should information
be controlled? I think that is up to that person to decide what is too much.
For myself, I would like if I could have that information available to me.
Works Cited:
Sutter, John. “New
search engines aspire to supplement Google.” CNN. Date Pub.: 12 May 2009. Date Accessed: 01 Oct 2012.
CNN. “Study:
Google not the best search engine.” YouTube.
Web. 01 Oct 2012.
I really like your idea of the individual deciding what is too much. It seems that when we talk about technology, we think about the users as a whole, and not as individuals. It's very true that we should all make our own decisions regarding technology, and not let the choices of the masses affect what we think is best for each of us.
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