Is the Interent and Google the Source of our Attention Problems???
I often find myself at work when no kids are in the weight room checking my facebook, looking at my bank account, my favorite fitness websites, or googling some information I need to know or interested about knowing. My home page is Google, now I sometimes become annoyed by this because it get monoplous seeing the word Google pop up on a consent basis. But other times I enjoy just typing in the first letter of what I am interested in seeing and Google knowing exactly where to take me. I have no time for anything it seems like and Google saves me the time of actually having to do research. But when reading these articles I found myself thinking is Google really helping me or is it hurting my knowledge on how to research information. When the author of “Is Google making us Stupid?’ says, “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” I totally related to what the author was saying because I no longer take my time and absorb all the information I could discover by surrounding myself with research books or text that could help me expand my knowledge, I instead just skim through information that will help me with the immediate problem I need help with. Although, I do not miss having to go to the library or looking on hours through the internet trying to find the answer to my problem I do think that my knowledge of the world and just reading what I need and all of the information, the author states that “people found themselves using the sites exhibit, a form of skimming activity, hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would bounce out to another site.” And to be honest the describes me to a tee when I have a million other things going on in my life other than having to keep an assignment. I want to get to the part that I need to know and not all of the other information that does not pertain to me at that very moment so I skim through what I feel is not to help of me and read the information that is going to help me complete my assignment. So my question to myself is I am really hurting myself or I am allowing myself to get my assignment done so I can move onto something else that may enrich my knowledge or is my brain adapting to the speed of the internet and my busy lifestyle?
When reading “get smarter” I found myself stopping and thinking about sentences or paragraphs on a consent bases wondering if I wasn’t really slacking on reading, but instead my brain was trying to catch up to the speed at which I live my life. The author states, “ They reward the capacity to make connections and to see patterns-precisely the kinds of skills we need for managing an information glut.” I totally agreed with this statement because the faster the world gets around the faster we need to be able to take in information and be able to adapt to the new information that is consently coming our way. We need to have the skill the author calls, “fluid intelligence” which is the ability to find meaning or importance. “in the confusion and to solve new problems, independent of acquired knowledge.” I found myself agreeing with this as well because being a new strength coach I have learned more in the past six months then I ever learned in four years of college about strength training. I think the concerned about people not gaining knowledge because they are not reading or they are skimming through information is concentrated on to much because humans are learning new information, skills, and so on through different experiences on a daily bases. As we keep advance so will technology and I truly believe in the end that technology has it pros and cons to our daily lives, but has humans we need to adapt as people have done over history. We need to recognize that technology isn’t just going to go away, but instead it is going to keep evolving and in that case so do we.
Is the Interent and Google the Source of our Attention Problems???
I often find myself at work when no kids are in the weight room checking my facebook, looking at my bank account, my favorite fitness websites, or googling some information I need to know or interested about knowing. My home page is Google, now I sometimes become annoyed by this because it get monoplous seeing the word Google pop up on a consent basis. But other times I enjoy just typing in the first letter of what I am interested in seeing and Google knowing exactly where to take me. I have no time for anything it seems like and Google saves me the time of actually having to do research. But when reading these articles I found myself thinking is Google really helping me or is it hurting my knowledge on how to research information. When the author of “Is Google making us Stupid?’ says, “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” I totally related to what the author was saying because I no longer take my time and absorb all the information I could discover by surrounding myself with research books or text that could help me expand my knowledge, I instead just skim through information that will help me with the immediate problem I need help with. Although, I do not miss having to go to the library or looking on hours through the internet trying to find the answer to my problem I do think that my knowledge of the world and just reading what I need and all of the information, the author states that “people found themselves using the sites exhibit, a form of skimming activity, hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would bounce out to another site.” And to be honest the describes me to a tee when I have a million other things going on in my life other than having to keep an assignment. I want to get to the part that I need to know and not all of the other information that does not pertain to me at that very moment so I skim through what I feel is not to help of me and read the information that is going to help me complete my assignment. So my question to myself is I am really hurting myself or I am allowing myself to get my assignment done so I can move onto something else that may enrich my knowledge or is my brain adapting to the speed of the internet and my busy lifestyle?
When reading “get smarter” I found myself stopping and thinking about sentences or paragraphs on a consent bases wondering if I wasn’t really slacking on reading, but instead my brain was trying to catch up to the speed at which I live my life. The author states, “ They reward the capacity to make connections and to see patterns-precisely the kinds of skills we need for managing an information glut.” I totally agreed with this statement because the faster the world gets around the faster we need to be able to take in information and be able to adapt to the new information that is consently coming our way. We need to have the skill the author calls, “fluid intelligence” which is the ability to find meaning or importance. “in the confusion and to solve new problems, independent of acquired knowledge.” I found myself agreeing with this as well because being a new strength coach I have learned more in the past six months then I ever learned in four years of college about strength training. I think the concerned about people not gaining knowledge because they are not reading or they are skimming through information is concentrated on to much because humans are learning new information, skills, and so on through different experiences on a daily bases. As we keep advance so will technology and I truly believe in the end that technology has it pros and cons to our daily lives, but has humans we need to adapt as people have done over history. We need to recognize that technology isn’t just going to go away, but instead it is going to keep evolving and in that case so do we.