"Is Google making us stoopid?" (Full Version)

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Level -> "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 4:45:15 PM)

quote:

"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)


http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

I see what he's saying.... I love to read, and have spent God knows how many hours doing so, but now... I've got several stacks of books, and I don't read them. Or, if I do, it takes forever. I'll read a page, or three, then start fucking around online.




christine1 -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 4:47:42 PM)

interesting Level, i was just having this conversation with a friend of mine a few days ago....i used to read voraciously, now i've probably got 30 books i've bought and haven't even opened them up yet....yet i seem to log in plenty of hours on the computer.   [8|]




camille65 -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 4:50:02 PM)

Interesting article. I think I spend about double the amount of time that I have a book in my hand over the amount of time I'm reading online, but I do nearly all of my personal communication online instead of in person now.
I'm a book junkie, no matter how much I find to read online it just cannot surpass the absolute pleasure that a bound book gives me.




MadameTakhisis -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 4:55:07 PM)

I find my new books online and read them on my laptop. Though I have put down fiction for over ten years. Non fiction is easier to find.




Aileen1968 -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 4:57:01 PM)

Boy Level, you spell real good.




DomMeinCT -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 4:58:10 PM)

In the struggle for how to spend what little free time I have, while reading books has taken a small hit to internet use, I spend much less time watching TV.




faerytattoodgirl -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 5:02:43 PM)

why read when there's likely a movie out.




MissMagnolia -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 5:11:04 PM)

I only read at night when I'm in bed (yes, my life really is that tragic[:D]). I honestly can't drop off until I've read a chapter or two, and I absolutely love the time I spend reading. My whole family is the same.I spend less time watching tv than I used to, but I can't ever imagine doing less reading

My son however, who is technology mad, hasn't picked a book up in years. I brought him up to read books, we always did the school library thing and I read to him, but now all he does is get on the pc. He is also very intelligent, so though he spends time on myspace, etc, he does actually do a lot of inadvertent study while he's touring around the net. But books? Nah.




Real_Trouble -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 5:11:06 PM)

This same sort of article was written about TV in the past, and radio before that, and blah blah blah.

I've read "culture is falling apart, everyone is stupid, and our young people suck" essays from the ancient greeks, for crying out loud.  People who genuinely want to read books will find time to read books; people for whom it was a low value activity will fail to read them.

I use the internet for reading blogs, arguing with people on forums, and harassing my colleagues and friends with inappropriate emails.  I've still managed to find the time to read several thousand books (mostly non-fiction) in my life already.




Level -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 5:22:02 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: christine1

interesting Level, i was just having this conversation with a friend of mine a few days ago....i used to read voraciously, now i've probably got 30 books i've bought and haven't even opened them up yet....yet i seem to log in plenty of hours on the computer.   [8|]


Yeah, I get the urge to throw my pc in the dumpster every so on, and increasingly so.




Level -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 5:23:14 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Aileen1968

Boy Level, you spell real good.


I rilly is a gut spehler.




slaveboyforyou -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 6:06:03 PM)

I go to the library and used book stores all the time to get books.  Yes, I am a cheapskate and a tightwad.  The only time I will buy new books is if I just have to read it, or it's in the bargain bin.   I do a lot of reading, even when I am online.  I look through dozens of newspapers online everyday.  I don't think the internet is killing reading, it's just changing the way that we do it.




kittinSol -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 6:11:17 PM)

http://www.ebooks.com/

I find the classification terrifying, but nobody can stop progress [:(] .




slaveboyforyou -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 6:53:53 PM)

Hey, I like ebooks Kittin.  I think it's a great idea.  When I was in grade school in the 80's, we were told that ALL books would be on computers when we reached adulthood.  We would no longer have to leave our homes to visit a library.  Of course, that like flying cars and moon cities hasn't happened.  But I think ebooks and virtual libraries are a great idea.  A lot of places in the world don't have access to libraries or easy access to books.  I think the internet has all sorts of possibilites and I find it exciting.  Project Gutenberg is already running and has hundreds of classics that can be read online.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page




kittinSol -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 6:57:50 PM)

I know, I know... it's the classification... "Knitting, Relationships, Scrapbooking, Sewing, Sex."

Edited, because relationships come before scrapbooking - trust me to forget about the facts of life [8D] .




popeye1250 -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 7:12:18 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Aileen1968

Boy Level, you spell real good.


Lol!
Yeah Level, Aileen's right!
Tell us your secrt!

"All books make good kindling, even good ones."
-anon-




slvemike4u -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 7:12:51 PM)

Time spent in my local book store is a little slice of heaven on earth to me,Camille I couldn't agree more nothing will ever replace the feeling of a bound book....




Griswold -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 7:38:06 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Level

quote:

"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)


http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

I see what he's saying.... I love to read, and have spent God knows how many hours doing so, but now... I've got several stacks of books, and I don't read them. Or, if I do, it takes forever. I'll read a page, or three, then start fucking around online.


Level, I'd just like to say, I appreciate your posts.

You always post to get people thinking....and you never inject your opinion (and while I appreciate that...I would respect you much more, if you, beforehand, got my opinion...and then expressed it as your own)....moreover, you post all the pertinent facts, along with the links (unlike me, who's far too lazy...who just links up....and expects everyone to link to and by virtue, understand my prose).

Now...on to the topic at hand...no, I don't think we're being dumbed down...

(But I do think far too many people presume Wikipedeia (sp?) among other sites, provide a far too finite proof of what is...and...I suspect they believe what they read).

Too often.




petdave -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 7:43:34 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Level
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google


Dude, that was way more than five lines... summary? Plzthxbai

Seriously, i don't see it applying to me at all. i've always read primarily as an escape, and i still read at least a book a week (i've gotta finish getting through the forums so i can get back to Kushiel's Mercy!). The Internet has made it far easier to pick up esoteric knowledge- motorcycle parts interchanges, how to build a waste-oil burner that will melt iron, electronics, construction, etc. etc. etc.- and perhaps even more importantly, share ideas and bounce them off of people across the world. i read far more now than i ever did before.

Sounds like he doesn't have Google Disease, he has Adult-Onset Attention Deficit Disorder. 




Alumbrado -> RE: "Is Google making us stoopid?" (6/12/2008 7:45:06 PM)

Google is just words...easier access to more words isn't the problem.  The problem is the inability or unwillingness to subject words to critical analysis, and that predates the 'Net by many, many, many years...




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