Okay, I admit it. Google is now my answer to everything. Don’t judge me, I know it’s the same for you too.
Excellent! Maybe. Or maybe our ability to retain and process information has pretty much come to an end. I was an avid quizzer till my undergraduate days. I was ranked among the top three in my state and used to be an encyclopedia of ‘unwanted’ information. The problem is, during grad school in India and while working, I started getting hooked to search engines. They sure did make fact checking easy! Considering I can’t check facts or learn new things without going to my online Mecca, I can safely say that the part of my brain that remembers things has started to rot. I can now barely remember my appointments for the day without my Google Calendar or the name of George Bush’s dog, let alone its breed! This from a person who remembers the name of the referee during the Hand of God goal – and I don’t even like soccer!
But then again, we live in an information society and we know and have access to a lot more information at our fingertips than ever before. So how are we supposed to remember anything, let alone trivia, when we can access Google from pretty much anything that has the capacity to go online? Why use a typewriter when you have a computer? Why remember possibly inane things when you have Google?
Carr observes that with the Internet, we are progressively used to skim through and jump from link to link, a habit he suspects that may have a negative effect on our brain, alienating us from serious and focused reading. In his book Digitopia, Richard Degrandpre, talks about a generation that is allowing the digital media to completely take over their lives. So much so that it is hard for them to do anything for a long period. I personally take offence to the generalization that we are a generation who won’t be content to sit through a three-hour epic or read an 800-page book. People do what they want with technology. In the same way as you choose what to write in an MSWord document, you can choose what you look for on Google. Also, with a dishwasher at home, why would you do dishes the traditional way?
Maybe I’m paranoid, or I’m just plain cynical, but there will be day when we’re going to sit at a bar and have a conversation about: Remember books? Those were the things we read before e-mail, Web browsing, and Facebook.
Humans are good at adapting, and with luck, this question too shall pass: Is Google making us stupid?
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