TO BE STUPID OR NOT BE STUPID
I am truly grateful for the web as well as the greatest invention ever: GOOGLE. Google has made being a college student an easy transition. There isn’t a question that google doesn’t have the answer too. For instance, have you forgotten how to spell a word- well google hasn’t, and do you need to know more about frogs well google will give you over a thousand resources on them. Google database is updated on a daily bases and today sits as the number one search engine in the world. It grants us with endless resources that sit at our fingertips, but are we missing out on the real joy that comes out of research and learning new things?
It has been debated for a while now that the media supplies the thoughts and they also shape the process of thoughts. For example, one might express that we are being treat like the computer and continually download what is deem relevant at that moment. Due to the dramatic changes in technology we are no longer able to think for ourselves which is where google comes into play. Google and numerous other search engines like Facebook and Instagram have reconstructed how we think today. It has causes us as race to become lazy. Yes lazy. We are surrounded by books and a hefty amount of research that is made available for us in our local libraries, yet we will type in two words in google to have the web discover the answers for us. As one would say we have added in the middle man to do all the work for us. Research has went from taking years to just a matter of seconds for average individual due to the vast amount of search engines available today.
On the other hand some might argue that we have come a long way since 1970s and 1980s when television was our medium of choice. Back when television controlled our range of mental capacity. Nevertheless, today we are exposed to a larger range of mediums and therefore are given other choices of addictions such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These very sites are limited to the amount of characters to type when express oneself or sharing news. We could argue that we are reading more but who is to say that it is relevant or helping us think critically for ourselves. How many of you click on the actually link to the articles on Facebook? I for one am guilty of just reading the headline and blurb and feel I am aware of what is going on.
The web is continually growing and therefore pushing out the former methods that have been around for centuries such as textbooks. Even newspaper are evolving and become web based only because we don’t desire to read from anything other than the web. Now for years it has been debated if you learn better sitting in front of a computer or by reading and highlighting in an actual book. Well I think that even though we have things now such as e-books the average students favorite “mylabs” we are taking away from the potential of that student actual retaining that information. Why? We don’t just stay looking at that one page we surf the web. Are attention span is not what it used to be anymore. We are no longer capable of just sitting and reading from a screen. We don’t even read the articles completely. We have invented skim reading which is where you “think” you are aware of what you have read. You gain the main ideas of the article and a few lines that you have make an argument from then we are finished.
Sadly as textbooks seem to become the past and Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram become the new systems used continually in class it scares me. I am concerned as to where we will be in less than five years when it come to the idea of what reading and learning really means. As everything transitions from print to web I don’t think we realize that even the newspapers are becoming more limited in information and beginning to look just blurbs and images. I remember buying magazines and my mother stating I had to do homework first which contain actual readings before I read what she though was trash. She always today me a magazine is nothing more than mere pictures and a few paragraphs but reading who killed a mockingbird was knowledge. Are newspapers are becoming just like magazines information that is limited and what I would consider trash. So many people uses Facebook, and google to find what is really going on in the world. I am guilt of searching Facebook or google to find out about a story rather than picking up a newspaper and reading it.
As Foreman states, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’ — spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.” We have given these resource the full benefit that they are never wrong and leaving out information. We have adapted to the idea that if we skim read we aren’t missing out on a great opportunity of learning something on our own. We have allowed for the web and google to replace our critical thinking skills. We are being dominated by the thing we love the most and are completely unaware of the consequences that lay ahead of us. We must take a step back and ask ourselves are we thinking for ourselves? Have we placed all our faith and trust in sources such as google, Facebook to grant us with knowledge. Are the new technology causing us to think less for ourselves? Have we lost the ability to critical think for ourselves and solve prob
