[Publib] "Is Google making us stupid?"

[Knieriem, Lesley]

Actually, yes.  Those "old guys" were right.  And the "deluge of
information" is hardly a new phenomenon - the human brain has always
soaked up as much information as it could possibly manage.  It's just
that once we were filtering and processing the myriad bird calls in the
forest, the scent of rain in the air, the give  of the ground beneath or
feet; now it's the threading of the messages on the screen, the speed of
the processor, the ratio of text to image.  It is as foolish to say that
we used to be "information-poor" as it is to say that now we are
"context-deprived."    

 

Yet I think that it is still worthwhile to look at the change in the
*nature* of that context.

 

 If you read Carr's essay carefully (and I realize that a WHOLE FIVE
PAGES, if was quite an effort to do so) he acknowledges that what he is
descrying may be interpreted as the eternal grump against the new;  but
he also does refer to the ways in which past technological changes in
the way we process information have indeed meant lost mental capacities
as well as gains.  Just think of the most basic transformation of all -
from the oral to the written word - and think about how much we have
lost in the interpersonal, whole-body, interactive form of communication
along with what we have gained in permanence and privacy.  The point of
a trade-off is that it is neither all Win nor all Lose.

 

I see this type of thinking very much nowadays in a younger generation
of librarians in terms of readers advisory, for example.  There is
access to a huge database of titles and tools (both online and in the
"mental database") that I would never have dreamed of when I went to
library school mmmphty-mmph years ago.  But there is also a distressing
dearth of context, of subtle interconnections of tone, style, mood, and
theme, that cannot be easily captured in the shallow categories of
"read-alikes" and "subject classification."  I can see the difference
when someone asks for "a book like this" - as I mentally place "this
book" in the context of an entire sweeping bibliographic essay, and try
to narrow it down gradually through the different categories of "genre"
"character types" and "literary style", while my more Google-trained
co-workers jump to mental links of  "this title" to "that" and "that"
and "that" individual book.  I would not say that one approach is
"better" than the other.  But I would say that there is an entire way of
thinking that seems to be disappearing, that has just as much - or as
little - value as the ability to construct and decode dense Jamesian
prose, or deduce meaning from the dogears and smudging on a well-thumbed
page.

 

Of course, I realize that I have now outed myself as a hopeless old
Luddite who just can't "cope with the new."

 

Creakily yours,

 

Lesley Knieriem

Rogers Public Library 

Rogers AR

 

________________________________

From: Rob Amend [mailto:rob.amend at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2008 9:59 AM
To: Publib
Subject: Re: [Publib] "Is Google making us stupid?"

 

"The index is making us stupid. It used to be that when you wanted
information, you would find a likely book and read the whole thing,
hoping to find what you were looking for. Now, all you have to do is go
to the back of the book and look for the word that will lead you to the
fact you seek. Sheer laziness."

 

Some Old Guy,

A Long Time Ago

 

"Gutenberg is making us stupid. It used to be that, if you wanted to
learn something, you would ask someone who learned from someone who had
a handwritten copy of a handwritten copy of a handwritten copy of a
book. Now, people can buy their own exact copies of a first publication,
and learn directly from the author. Where will it end?"

 

Another Old Guy,

A Long Time Ago

 

Google is not the Internet. This deluge of information is here to stay.
We'd better make our peace with it, and create tools to help us sift
through it all--like Google.

 


-- 
Rob Amend
Reference Librarian
rob.amend at gmail.com
blog.reftechrob.com 



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