Overreliance on Search Engines?
November 3, 2014
The Salon.com article titled Google Makes Us All Dumber: The Neuroscience of Search Engines probes the ever-increasing reliance on search engines and finds that the way we use them is problematic. This is due to the way our brains respond to this simplified question and answer process. The article stipulates that the harder we work for knowledge, the more likely we are to store it. When it is as simple as typing in a search query and reading a simple answer, we will forget the answer as easily as we found it. The article explains,
“It’s not that the Internet is making us stupid or incurious. Only we can do that. It’s that we will only realize the potential of technology and humans working together when each is focused on its strengths — and that means we need to consciously cultivate effortful curiosity. Smart machines are taking over more and more of the tasks assumed to be the preserve of humans. But no machine, however sophisticated, can yet be said to be curious.”
We are all guilty of using Google as a shortcut to end a fight over a fact or using IMDB to quickly be reminded of that actor what’s-her-name in that movie whatdya-callit. But the article points out that as we lean more on search engines in this fashion it will only shorten our recalls and diminish our ability to ask interesting questions.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 03, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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