In terms of how our generation thinks, I think it is is completely different from how the people in the 18th hundredths used to think. Information comes to us much more quickly and easily as it did for them. A little too fast that the content is less valued and easily ignored. Take research projects for instance, it’s not even “researching” much less than just “googling” it. The word “google” even made itself into the dictionary as a verb because our generation doesn’t seem to be able to function without this extremely ubiquitous search engine. I can’t entirely speak for everyone but I could say this for myself, the moment I hear a teacher say something like “For your next research project…” I immediately think “Oh, that’s easy. I’ll just google it tonight” Researching isn’t as painstaking and time consuming as it used to be. When you’d have to literally SEARCH for the information that you need but now it’s as easy as typing in “google.com” but even that step is already done for me because google is my homepage. So the next thing I’d have to type in is a few keywords and click, bam, woosha!
Our generation is filled with slothfulness and the time in which Postman seems to highly glorify is gone forever. Our generation is just deeply submerged in this “information-glut” that I think that we really are becoming more stupid. Down-grading and slowly losing our minds. When we do the research projects, how many of us actually read every thing we google, half the time I focus on the headline and skim halfway through the article to find something fresh and interesting. But do I remember it? No, because what I have read, or “browsed” through in this case never really formed in my brain. The incoherence of the information that I was looking for just never truly sunk into my head because the assimilation and contemplation process didn’t really work for me. I skipped through that because I easily found the information, there was no thinking involved, just general clicking and typing.
That’s the difference between the 18th century and our google-everything-generation. They actually thought about what they knew because it wasn’t all random, incoherent facts.
We turned into idle robots who expect to find answers in a flash. What’s the point of memorizing capitals and cities if we can just easily google it? Just think about it.. how many times have you put in “Myspace” or “Facebook” in a search bar just so you wouldn’t have to type the “http://www…”
I also found this very interesting article called "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and I think it clearly defines my point in a more articulate way.
Our generation is filled with slothfulness and the time in which Postman seems to highly glorify is gone forever. Our generation is just deeply submerged in this “information-glut” that I think that we really are becoming more stupid. Down-grading and slowly losing our minds. When we do the research projects, how many of us actually read every thing we google, half the time I focus on the headline and skim halfway through the article to find something fresh and interesting. But do I remember it? No, because what I have read, or “browsed” through in this case never really formed in my brain. The incoherence of the information that I was looking for just never truly sunk into my head because the assimilation and contemplation process didn’t really work for me. I skipped through that because I easily found the information, there was no thinking involved, just general clicking and typing.
That’s the difference between the 18th century and our google-everything-generation. They actually thought about what they knew because it wasn’t all random, incoherent facts.
We turned into idle robots who expect to find answers in a flash. What’s the point of memorizing capitals and cities if we can just easily google it? Just think about it.. how many times have you put in “Myspace” or “Facebook” in a search bar just so you wouldn’t have to type the “http://www…”
I also found this very interesting article called "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and I think it clearly defines my point in a more articulate way.
I agree with what you are saying on how without actually searching for anything we are in fact not learning anything. Take a baseball team for example if they win a game three to zero and somewhere down the road they go to the sixteenth inning and win with two outs and a full count which game do you think they will remember with the most detail. The one that was harder to win. If we aren't working to discover or learn about something then we will easily forget it.
ReplyDeleteWell I'm not quite sure if future generations are getting more and more stupid because of information availability with the web. I would blame a growing stupidity of this generation (of it really is true) more generally on technology and popular media (I'd say video games and stupid movies...not to mention pointless children's shows). Ease does not have to mean laziness. If you could go to Myspace with the search bar faster than typing the complete adress. Why not do so? It saves time right? Why not waste advantage?
ReplyDeleteWith regards to doing complete research, there's just some people who would really read all info and some that would not care; the latter being the majority. I'm sure every generation has its lazy and industrious group. People have different interests. Why would you read a thousand word article about the circulatory system if you're more interested about fashion(and vice versa). And I assure you there are kids who are interested in the circulatory system.
I believe the problem though is that a lot of the kids of our generation is too stuck inside the house. Many teens are getting eating up by TV and the internet. What happened to go out and play? It's not necesarrily stupidy that's the problem it's more of laziness.
I have to admit i do that sometimes. If im reading something and i think that part is boring, i will skip that part and skim until something interesting comes up. I also think it is lazyness. when im doing research a majority of my research is internet resources because its easier.
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