I wrote Part 1 of this post after our class discussion a few weeks ago on "push" and "pull" media and how people are remembering less information because they know they can find pretty much anything online. After writing the first part, I went to Google and typed in "why memorize facts when information is so easily available on the Internet." The results? About 34,000,000 of them. Thus the second part of the post (and a new title for the first part) was born.
Not surprisingly, there were multiple points of view on the idea of people's inability or unwillingness to memorize facts they can find online. Headlines ranged from "Piece of mind: Is the Internet replacing our ability to remember?" to "How the Internet is making us stupid" to "The Internet is changing our brains — but so what?" (Yikes.) There even is a term for it (hence the blog post title) — the Google effect, coined by three researchers who conducted a 2011 study at Columbia and Harvard universities that found people are less likely to remember certain facts when they think they can find them using a computer.
I hate to sound like a curmudgeon, but I don't think this bodes well for us as humans. I fear it will curtail our innate curiosity — something that journalists and other communicators need in spades. In one of the 34,000,000 results was a quote from Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the script for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey:
Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.
I also wanted to share the infographic below that I saw on Edudemic.com.
Merriam-Webster now lists "google" as a verb, so there's probably no going back. I just hope Google with a capital G is a benevolent emperor....
As we talked in class tonight about "push"
and "pull" media, and how people increasingly are retaining less
information because they know they can find whatever they need online, I was
reminded of a New York Times opinion piece that I read, heartily agreed with
and bookmarked a few months ago titled "Faking Cultural Literacy." In it, journalist Karl Greenfeld laments
that the technology that puts the world at our fingertips also can keep us from
learning much at all. Information is pushed into our lives non-stop — so
much information, so quickly, that it physically is impossible to absorb, and
eventually we don't even try:
It’s never been so easy to pretend to know so much without
actually knowing anything. We pick topical, relevant bits from Facebook,
Twitter or emailed news alerts, and then regurgitate them. Instead of watching
“Mad Men” or the Super Bowl or the Oscars or a presidential debate, you can
simply scroll through someone else’s live-tweeting of it, or read the recaps
the next day. Our cultural canon is becoming determined by whatever gets the
most clicks. ... What matters to us, awash in petabytes of data, is not
necessarily having actually consumed this content firsthand but simply knowing
that it exists — and having a position on it, being able to engage in the
chatter about it. We come perilously close to performing a pastiche
of knowledgeability that is really a new model of know-nothingness.
(LOVE that last sentence.)
Greenfeld also readily admits to being guilty as charged,
and surmises that "those of us in the business of gathering, dispensing
and otherwise trafficking in information may be among the worst
offenders." He is right, sadly. We as communicators often are expected by
our readers, viewers, bosses, CEOs or whomever to know something about pretty
much everything, as unrealistic an expectation as that is. The pressure to
break a news story before anyone else or keep up with the latest social media
statistics for our PR clients is immense, and we fear overlooking that one bit
of information that could be the game changer. Yet how can we possibly keep up
with the overflow in our inboxes and Twitter feeds? We can't, really, so we
skim, save and hope we remember what we need when we need it.
In The Elements of Journalism, Kovach and Rosenstiel
acknowledge the pressure that the 24/7 news cycle puts on journalists, but say
the stakes are too high to fake it. "The pursuit of truth is a process
that requires an intellectual discipline and vigilance," they wrote in
Chapter 2. "And the need for this is greater, not lesser, in the new
century because the likelihood of untruth has become so much greater."
Now if you'll excuse me, I DVR'd "Chicago Fire" last night, and yes, I'm going to fast-forward through the
commercials (sorry advertisers).
