Is Google Making Us Stupid?

[canman]

Computer says; No

[Tywais]

Looks like the OP Googled the title "is google making us stupid" as lots of hits and Thaivisa doesn't make page one.

[Tywais]

People have been saying that computers are making us dumber basically since computers existed. Then the Internet came, eventually bringing Google into existence, and any hope for the future of intelligent life spiraled off into cyberspace. A seminal 2008 cover story by Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic put the question on the stand: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The article served more as a jumping off point for future research and over the course of the next few years, scientists and journalists alike tried to provide an answer with a number of experiments and studies. (Carr kept going too, expanding the six-page piece into a 276-page book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.)

A just-published study in Science offers the latest set of findings, and a quick read suggests that yes, Google is hampering our ability to recall information. Led by Betsy Sparrow at Columbia University, the study also found that Google improves certain kinds of memory, like methods for retrieving information. Sparrow's findings aren't the whole story, though. As scientists have stressed since the dawn of web, the effects of Internet usage on cognition are pretty complicated.

Search engines are rerouting our memory. According to Science, we're not necessarily losing our ability to remember things. Rather, the internet is changing how we remember. Ars Technica sums up the results nicely, "People are recalling information less, and instead can remember where to find the information they have forgotten." This is pretty similar to a 2008 report in The New York Times on reading online versus reading in print. Guinevere F. Eden, director of the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown, told The Times, "The brain is malleable and adapts to its environment," she said. "Whatever the pressures are on us to succeed, our brain will try and deal with it. The question is, does it change your brain in some beneficial way?"

Certain types of memory are improving. When the brain reroutes how we recall information, it develops different types of memory capabilities. Science offers this example: If somebody asks you how many national flags have just one color, do you think first about the actual flags? Or does your brain jump right to how you would find it? If you're an active Google user, you probably already started thinking of keywords. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. "The brain is very specialized in its circuitry and if you repeat mental tasks over and over it will strengthen certain neural circuits and ignore others," says Gary Small, a neuroscience professor at UCLA.

More here - Theatlanticwire

[StreetCowboy]

Google, yes only use Google, but what get me is say you search for a flight to somewhere........... So enter 'Fly Bangkok to ........... brings up most UK companies or US with prices in GBP or US$....... why ?

Look for the Thai Bus timetable, fine mostly shows all the Bus Companies going to the destination you have entered, but then come the difficult part, try to find the times returning,,,,, So enter the destination to Bangkok by Bus the pages all come up with Bangkok to.......... Not what I want or asked

The list is endless, I appear to spend more time keep changing what I am looking for before I can get what I am really looking for.

Maybe I am searching wrong ?

The problem is that Google offers us things that other people have been interested in, I think, or sites that have been tailored to be quickly found.

Say, for example, I want an interesting article comparing rugby league and rugby union - particularly the scrums. The obvious place to start would be to search on terms like "abomination in the sight of the lord", "pernicious skullduggery" and "black arts"

But the first link offered by Google is some wikipedia <deleted> about necromancy which doesn't even mention scrummaging, or, indeed, rugby at all, and the specific article of interest was only returned second on the list. Interestingly, the 'pernicious' was more important than the distinctive spelling of skullduggery, or the phrase 'by the way', by the way.

SC

[uptheos]

Computer says; No

[canman]

Computer says; No

Thats the one!!

[GarryP]

I googled "stupid" and got 486,000,000 results.

I googled "stupid" and got a link to Payboy.

[Payboy]

I googled "stupid" and got 486,000,000 results.

I googled "stupid" and got a link to Payboy.

Click on that link at your own risk.

[StreetCowboy]

Following on from a discussion on another topic, I've been using the reviled googlw & wikipedia to learn about Greenland. I never used to do that in the pub

SC

It reminds me of an Icelandic film I saw once, which reminded me of our own remote island communities, and made me glad I don't live in some bleak windswept oxter like Lerwick or Lamma or somewhere

[Geekfreaklover]

No one person is born stupid nor intelligent. A child learns from his or her parents, their peers and their teachers. The interent offers an enormous wealth of information for both child and parent. How a person chooses to absord the information avaiable on the internet is influenced by what they have learned by their parents, their teachers, and their peers. Google, the internet, technology, is something that can be used to great effective if the surfers have been taught how to access information with critical thought and not take everything they read as gospel.

Same went for books, same went for word of mouth before. Some ancients like Socrates were fearful of written language as they believed it would hinder the humans ability to store and process information in the mind. Some moderns think the same thing about the internet.

The truth is it is an amazing tool that like all tools can and should be used to create a free-thinking intelligent global community. It is a good thing and does not make people stupid unless they are stupid already and using it as a vechicle to extend their stuipidity. For most people information is a good thing.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Geekfreaklover

[theblether]

@Tywais

I recognize what is being said......my recall used to be fantastic, and now it's disappearing. It's easy to say that it's age but I'm only 46!!

I know, I know.....so wise and talented, and still just a pup.

[MAJIC]

Following on from a discussion on another topic, I've been using the reviled googlw & wikipedia to learn about Greenland. I never used to do that in the pub

SC

It reminds me of an Icelandic film I saw once, which reminded me of our own remote island communities, and made me glad I don't live in some bleak windswept oxter like Lerwick or Lamma or somewhere

Yep! and all we got from the Bar room lawyers was a load of crap information,for the most part, and conflicting, useless, and outdated at that!

Edited December 17, 2012 by MAJIC

[endure]

Its not making us stupid, but it is changing the way we access information. Schools and curriculum should no longer be focused on filling us with information, but rather, the think creatively, and problem solve, with the information in hand.

'Never memorise something that you can look up' - Albert Einstein.

[endure]

Following on from a discussion on another topic, I've been using the reviled googlw & wikipedia to learn about Greenland. I never used to do that in the pub

SC

It reminds me of an Icelandic film I saw once, which reminded me of our own remote island communities, and made me glad I don't live in some bleak windswept oxter like Lerwick or Lamma or somewhere

I used to visit Lerwick regularly when I sailed with BP. I bought a fabulous fair isle jumper there once

[ignis]

@Tywais

I recognize what is being said......my recall used to be fantastic, and now it's disappearing. It's easy to say that it's age but I'm only 46!!

I know, I know.....so wise and talented, and still just a pup.

In a few years that will be very good when watching TV if you still in Thailand.......... you will not remember if it is a repeat or a film you have seen before

If you have a camera take pictures of your friends, later when that nice thiing keeps smiling at you and saying hello you can check if they are friends.