In Peter Osnos article What’s a Fair Share in the Age of Google? He pointed out within five years of Google’s introduction to the world, “Google was a verb”. I didn’t really put much though into how much I used Google or actually “Googled” something until he said that. Now that I think about it, I Google everything. If I need to find a song, I type the lyrics into Google. If I am looking for a video, I type in the video description into Google. Even when I am looking for jobs, internships, clothes, etc. I simply go to Google first.
I believe everyone can attest that have done at least one of the things I listed above. So much grief is given technology because we use it so much in our lives. We have been accused of becoming dependent on our media and technological devices. Yes, it is true some of us thrive off of our gadgets. With that in mind Google immediately receives that backlash and negative comments such as, it’s just another one of societies technological “crutches” that we use to accomplish our tasks faster, easier, and without much thought.
Most of us are guilty of turning to Google for in-depth researching at times. I can admit sometimes that may be a bit of a hassle when one search item even if it’s extremely specific can have nearly 100 thousand results. A hundred thousand results is a great deal of material to go through especially when time and patience are scarce. Google has made strides to improve such problems. One way is their addition of Google Scholar. Google Scholar allows more professional writers the opportunity to find material that is academically noteworthy and more relatable to their topic, while still giving the authors of such scholarly writing all the credit they deserve.
There are some things that may not be given proper credit where credit is due. But what do you expect from the internet. Anything and everything is on the World Wide Web. And as we all know once something is posted up, it’s up and once it’s been shared, it’s hard to control who has it and where it is going.