When I was in elementary school my teacher would take us to the school library. The nice little librarian would come over and give us a lesson on how to look up books in the book catalog. After you received the correct number you physically had to walk over to the shelves and search for the book. I believe I used this method throughout the remainder of elementary school, because soon after the world was introduced to Google.
If you have a question now days, what do you do? Hardly anybody pulls out an actual dictionary, phone book, encyclopedia, or bother driving down to the library. The popular phrase, “Google it” comes out of everyone’s mouths. Google has changed the world. A search engine so intelligent it can practically guess what word you are going to type next. It’s a great feature, and sometimes I wonder how anybody survived without it. Which leads to my questions; could people actually find answers to their questions without it? Have we completely lost touch with the basics of how our parents and grandparents learned? Are we signing our lives away to Google?
The power that Google has on society is greater than a lot of people know. It’s easy, it’s practical, but is it really helping us? Sometimes I feel like we are selling ourselves short. Our parents didn’t have the luxury of striking a few keys and “ta dah!” the answer suddenly appears in front of your face. They made it through high school and college the old fashion way. Now instead of learning how to use the book catalog in elementary school, teachers are showing children how to type, click, and receive.
Laptops, Ipads, and Iphones are the norm for a 7 year old. They won’t ever get the joy of “hunting for the answer” besides browsing through a few websites. I actually don’t think we retain information as well this way. We rely on Google so much, and we know it’s not going anywhere, so why bother remembering anything? It’s sad, but true. Google is making us stupid.