Google Search and Our Dynamics with it!

When was the last time you tried to recall phone numbers?

When was the last time you googled to get details for your knowledge or specific projects?

Do you do any kind of research offline so as to complete projects or is it all online?

The answer to these questions shall show us just one thing. That we are heavily in love with technology to learn and are slowly losing our ability to store information within us.

Is that good or is that bad?

Science is vertically split on the issue with one side vehemently opposing it and the other mentioning that the same was always around! Let’s see for ourselves!

Those who hold that going online and depending upon technology is bad in the long run point to the fact that easy availability of information at our fingertips without much effort is making us a race that loves consumption and not research. With hardly any research taking place to understand even the basics we just may have a generation whose feet are always in the air. Not many of us favor rote learning but, not many understand that the same to an extent is needed to keep things in our long-term memory. Without mugging even basics, we would perennially be dependent upon aids and machines to make us remember things. What we have today is a situation which promotes ‘cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning,’ (as per Nicholas Carr, author of What the internet is doing to our brains) which comes in the way of imbibing wisdom and knowledge- essential to the growth of humankind the way we see it today.

Those who hold opposite views say that this ‘outsourcing of remembering’ has always been there from the time humans started to draw and write. Writing, painting, carving, and chiseling are ways by which information is transferred to an external medium and is almost the same as looking up the net every once in a while. Pure, authentic and original research and knowledge in any case was never the forte of the entire population. It was always done by a select few with the rest just using the same for their advantage. In fact, what digitization, googling and the internet have done, as per this group, is to free the mind for ‘higher’ abilities which, as per scientists, we are yet to discover. Rote learning and memory, in fact, are a small part of our brain’s ability though it seems to occupy an awful space when it comes to using our time and patience!

The jury is out on this one, and can safely be put down to one’s own individual preferences. What though needs to be done is to restrict gadget time so that addiction is kept at bay.