For the past decade, I have spent my work weeks at a computer, searching the World Wide Web for information. I use the Internet daily to assist students and colleagues, and going to the Web has become second nature in meeting my own information needs. In the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", Nicholas Carr discusses the Internet's potential effects on human cognition, worrying that it is "subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies." According to Carr, the Internet "is becoming our map and our clocks, our printing press and our typewriter, our calendar and our telephone, and our radio and TV."1
I'm not sure when the Internet began shaping the way I think, but there were signs along the way. I dropped my newspaper subscription because I got most of my news online. I renewed library books again and again because I couldn't finish a book - even a good one - before the due date. When I do read, my thoughts distract me and expect any concept that interests me to lead immediately to a related concept, background information, an image or a map. Basically, I want my book to hyperlink.
Watching the video below, it's easy to pity or scorn poor Joe for his expectations. Joe and the rest of the Net Generation have been surfing and linking since pre-school. It's funny to see a kid as befuddled by a textbook as his grandmother's generation was by a cell phone. But in some ways, Joe's information-seeking behavior is uncomfortably close to mine, and it's important to acknowledge that at least Joe is seeking information.
If the picture of Frederick Douglass in his book prompts Joe to search for more information, why shouldn't that be as easy as a double-click? Of course he could turn to the index in the textbook, then browse alphabetically for the correct entry, then flip to the appropriate pages, and then - finally - read. But if that same information is stored just behind the image in a Web environment, then I suspect Joe could read up on Frederick Douglass and move on to Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the same time it would take to find page 43 in his textbook.
Carr's article also points out that "the kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the intellectual vibrations that those words set off within our own minds."2 I'd like to think that using the Internet has increased our knowledge, that like the printing press, it's a tool that enables us to access and share information across a broader audience. But I do miss having the ability to become engrossed by a long passage of well-written text, and I find it a little sad that students like Joe may never have that experience.
Resources:
Carr, N. (2008, July/August). Is Google making us stupid? The Atlantic, 201(6). Retrieved February 1, 2010, from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
Thoughtful post. Enjoyed the personal to profession dimension. Good points. I like your thinking.
ReplyDeleteJulie,
ReplyDeleteI like this post. You have reminded us that it's not just young people who have short attention spans these days. We are all overloaded with information. We're facing constant distractions. I feel lucky that I can still curl up and read a good book. But like you, I am finding that I'm not getting through them as quickly as possible. I know one of the reasons for that is my need/desire to always be connected to the web.
Julie,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with what you have written and even our books we read for pleasure are online now with Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook! I have plenty of books in my library at home and I received my Kindle for Christmas last year. It is most definitely a space saver and cheaper then buying hundreds of books from the bookstore, however, there is just something about going to the public library (yes I still do that) and picking out a free book and curling up on the couch with it. Something to me is lost when I am reading a good novel on a flat screen and I can never turn the page or just flip through to see how much I have left.
Something that you wrote really hit home concerning my student’s in school, that the computer is now our clock! To use the restroom or go to another class our students have to fill out an agenda with the time out, their destination, the date, and the teacher’s signature. I teach 17 and 18 year olds and I would say about 85% of them come up to me in the beginning of the semester with everything filled out but the time. I say look at the clock (we do not use digital, we have standard wall clocks in our school) and write down the time, they then ask to look at my computer because they can’t read the clock on the wall. WHAT?!?? That is something that I learned in the first grade, but these kids are so used to looking at their phones and computer’s digital time that they honestly don’t know how to tell time on a normal wall clock. This is both sad and embarrassing, I am happy to say that by the end of the school year my students can read the clock on the wall because I make them learn how, to go to the bathroom.
Cari Tester