Business Week has stirred up a debate by carrying a piece questioning if Google was killing intellect.
The article went on to talk about how the mammoth engine who promised to “never be evil” delivers facts, information and nowadays, even references– check scholar.google.com –makes us intellectually lazy. Who will wade through arcane sources trying to know about Virgil, when Google does that for you in flat 0.28 seconds (and by the way, also tells you about Virgil’s Root Beer, brewed in the north of England)
I have personally witnessed people digging out reams of information and data on all kinds of subjects without much corresponding insights or understanding. So I have some sympathy for the view that very often collation of information becomes a surrogate for intellectual rigour; that making so much available so easily results in reducing knowledge to the trivial. In the process, it reduces our respect for knowledge. It also, so goes a point of view, turns users away from more considered sources of learning and knowledge like books, classes etc.
But in today’s context, this perspective seems dated. It also seems rooted in a certain kind of misplaced class consciousness. It smacks of arguments that were put forth in feudal times for not translating works of classics in the commoners’ language. The argument went that making the work more accessible makes it less of a classic and reduces the “gravitas” of the work.
Like it or not, Google and its Wiki cousins have democratized information.
They have become the language of today’s commoner. They are as much of tools as pen or paper. (By the way I just realized that I have been forgetting my pen at home for a couple of days and have not missed it at all – can’t say the same about my computer or mobile). Today, and more so in the future, just giving somebody information will make him / her as smart as giving them a pen. They’ll have a useful tool but that’s pretty much it. What they do with that information, how well they internalise it, play with it and give it new dimensions; that’s what will make will them winners. And that puts a greater onus on the rest of society; to evaluate the quality of ideas and concepts a person comes up with based on all the freely available information. Tougher on all of us? Yes. But eventually it’s also a step towards creating a richer, more evolved bunch of people.
The article went on to talk about how the mammoth engine who promised to “never be evil” delivers facts, information and nowadays, even references– check scholar.google.com –makes us intellectually lazy. Who will wade through arcane sources trying to know about Virgil, when Google does that for you in flat 0.28 seconds (and by the way, also tells you about Virgil’s Root Beer, brewed in the north of England)
I have personally witnessed people digging out reams of information and data on all kinds of subjects without much corresponding insights or understanding. So I have some sympathy for the view that very often collation of information becomes a surrogate for intellectual rigour; that making so much available so easily results in reducing knowledge to the trivial. In the process, it reduces our respect for knowledge. It also, so goes a point of view, turns users away from more considered sources of learning and knowledge like books, classes etc.
But in today’s context, this perspective seems dated. It also seems rooted in a certain kind of misplaced class consciousness. It smacks of arguments that were put forth in feudal times for not translating works of classics in the commoners’ language. The argument went that making the work more accessible makes it less of a classic and reduces the “gravitas” of the work.
Like it or not, Google and its Wiki cousins have democratized information.
They have become the language of today’s commoner. They are as much of tools as pen or paper. (By the way I just realized that I have been forgetting my pen at home for a couple of days and have not missed it at all – can’t say the same about my computer or mobile). Today, and more so in the future, just giving somebody information will make him / her as smart as giving them a pen. They’ll have a useful tool but that’s pretty much it. What they do with that information, how well they internalise it, play with it and give it new dimensions; that’s what will make will them winners. And that puts a greater onus on the rest of society; to evaluate the quality of ideas and concepts a person comes up with based on all the freely available information. Tougher on all of us? Yes. But eventually it’s also a step towards creating a richer, more evolved bunch of people.
3 comments:
Kumar,
You sure are waking up early for these posts!
Google to my mind has performed a singular service in democratising information and enabled learning significantly. Now, what does happen is that the more time you spend on the net, the less of it you have for other sources of learning. Like every source of learning- be it books, movies, newspapers, magazines, wiki/blogs, mail or websites, there is a need to separate the wheat from the chaff. So a surfeit of information can make it harder for you to get smart, but that is a poor argument against access to information as I will explain below.
What Google has done is to make it incredibly more difficult with the proliferation of information to focus on the bits that are really relevant and useful. In fact, one of my friends- Atanu (www.deeshaa.org) made the point when we met that too much of input-output activity leaves the CPU (the brain) insufficient time to reflect and learn. I would say that we are challenged in being able to control the input we get and to focus on what is important to us. This is a challenge that cannot be tackled by Google or any other information source. This is rightly a task of other 'filter' devices that can serve to learn your needs/ habits and trawl the web for you. In addition to filters, there is a need to package information in useful forms to enable ready assimilation. So you need information 'packers' of a sort. You also need 'tutors' to deliver the information and analysis efficiently. I might be getting these terms wrong, but the short point is that you cannot blame the river or ran clouds or much less global weather patterns for the poor quality or high price of packaged drinking water that you buy!
So more than blaming Google for trivialising information, I feel we owe this invention of a search engine a debt for making information accessible to us. Imagine how mush slower learning would be without search engines!
Absolutely agree, Ram. As a friend put it, just because Google helps idiots look good, it doesn't make it lesser a force for the good.
interesting post Coomer...have wondered about it off and on...
I agree with Ramchandra's views!
also just like in a capitalist system, whenever a new machine came, the rise in productivity made the rich richer...
The gap bewteen the haves and the have nots increased...
Similarly, I guess in an information economy, the search engine is making the smarter people more smart!
the new gap is between the smarts and the smart-nots LOL
Coomer - you are giving me ideas for my next post. thanks:-)
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