Googling Fools
Is the Internet a brain drain?
By Kelvin Wade | | February 28, 2008 15:52
Is Google making us intellectually lazy? Recently, my girlfriend Cathi's 11-year-old granddaughter Lauryn asked me who was president when I was her age. Lincoln? While I chuckled at the Lincoln crack, a new study out this week isn't so funny. The study, reported in USA Today, says teens are losing touch with cultural and historical references.
The study by the American Enterprise Institute surveyed 1,200 17-year-olds and found that half could not identify what McCarthyism was about. 'Big Brother' from George Orwell's 1984 was a mystery to 48 percent and less than half of them knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900. Overall, the students received an F in literature and a C in history.
Cultural and historical references are necessary for the cohesion of the country. A shared knowledge of a society's history is one of the things that foster a sense of community and helps people assimilate. This is especially important with the immigration debate.
What kind of nation are we going to be if our young people can identify Zac Efron and Chris Brown but don't know who Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Banneker was? (Now the older folks are thinking: Who are Zac Efron and Chris Brown?)
But it may be that technology has simply made learning such things irrelevant. With the Internet, who needs to store knowledge in their heads anymore?
You know when you get a song in your head but you can't remember who sang it or the name of it? I used to wrack my brain trying to come up with the answer. Now, I rest my gray matter and send my fingertips into action on my keyboard. I type in the lyrics and I have the title and artist in two seconds.A teen growing up today may ask herself why she needs to know when the Civil War was fought or who Harriet Tubman was when she can just Google it.
For the first time in the history of the world, the collective knowledge of the entire world is at our fingertips. Just about anything we want to know can be found online. If someone uses a Dennis Miller-like obscure reference, anyone can search for it and get the joke.
When the game show 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' was on and a contestant would call a friend or relative for help with an answer, you could often hear the person on the other end of the phone typing away. They were Googling.
And with Internet access available on cell phones, this vast store of knowledge is now portable. I don't know if this trend can be turned around. It's hard to believe young people will start flocking to history books, John Steinbeck and George Orwell over Myspace and Google.
n n n
Speaking of teens, naming the new teen center after Fairfield developer and philanthropist Billy Yarbrough is an idea whose time has come. In fact, it's overdue.
Everyone should think about finding their own way to give back to the community. You may not have money to donate to various local causes. But you might have time, ideas and energy to offer. You could do something in your own neighborhood to make the city more livable.
Thank you, Yarbrough family. Peace.
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NOTES: My ass hurts because that's where I pulled this week's column out of. It just wasn't there for me this week. Usually columns write themselves. I just feel like a conduit. So, this week, I seized on this study to expand on something I've often thought about. There are so many things I don't even bother to think about anymore. I just head to my keyboard. There's been nothing like the internet in the history of the world so it has to change us in some way.
Just as our highly processed food diet has impacted humans' weight and health, there's no way you can have profound changes like this and have it not impact the species. TV watching has to have some effect on us as a species because we've went thousands of years without it. Our many inventions that have made life easier have made humans more sedentary animals. So being able to store so much easily accessible information OUTSIDE our heads is a new thing and has to have some effect.
If you check out my Other Side DR blog, you can read about Fairfield's fat black crime wave.
The Wading in blog features some reviews of movies now available on DVD.
The study by the American Enterprise Institute surveyed 1,200 17-year-olds and found that half could not identify what McCarthyism was about. 'Big Brother' from George Orwell's 1984 was a mystery to 48 percent and less than half of them knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900. Overall, the students received an F in literature and a C in history.
Cultural and historical references are necessary for the cohesion of the country. A shared knowledge of a society's history is one of the things that foster a sense of community and helps people assimilate. This is especially important with the immigration debate.
What kind of nation are we going to be if our young people can identify Zac Efron and Chris Brown but don't know who Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Banneker was? (Now the older folks are thinking: Who are Zac Efron and Chris Brown?)
But it may be that technology has simply made learning such things irrelevant. With the Internet, who needs to store knowledge in their heads anymore?
You know when you get a song in your head but you can't remember who sang it or the name of it? I used to wrack my brain trying to come up with the answer. Now, I rest my gray matter and send my fingertips into action on my keyboard. I type in the lyrics and I have the title and artist in two seconds.A teen growing up today may ask herself why she needs to know when the Civil War was fought or who Harriet Tubman was when she can just Google it.
For the first time in the history of the world, the collective knowledge of the entire world is at our fingertips. Just about anything we want to know can be found online. If someone uses a Dennis Miller-like obscure reference, anyone can search for it and get the joke.
When the game show 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' was on and a contestant would call a friend or relative for help with an answer, you could often hear the person on the other end of the phone typing away. They were Googling.
And with Internet access available on cell phones, this vast store of knowledge is now portable. I don't know if this trend can be turned around. It's hard to believe young people will start flocking to history books, John Steinbeck and George Orwell over Myspace and Google.
n n n
Speaking of teens, naming the new teen center after Fairfield developer and philanthropist Billy Yarbrough is an idea whose time has come. In fact, it's overdue.
Everyone should think about finding their own way to give back to the community. You may not have money to donate to various local causes. But you might have time, ideas and energy to offer. You could do something in your own neighborhood to make the city more livable.
Thank you, Yarbrough family. Peace.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
NOTES: My ass hurts because that's where I pulled this week's column out of. It just wasn't there for me this week. Usually columns write themselves. I just feel like a conduit. So, this week, I seized on this study to expand on something I've often thought about. There are so many things I don't even bother to think about anymore. I just head to my keyboard. There's been nothing like the internet in the history of the world so it has to change us in some way.
Just as our highly processed food diet has impacted humans' weight and health, there's no way you can have profound changes like this and have it not impact the species. TV watching has to have some effect on us as a species because we've went thousands of years without it. Our many inventions that have made life easier have made humans more sedentary animals. So being able to store so much easily accessible information OUTSIDE our heads is a new thing and has to have some effect.
If you check out my Other Side DR blog, you can read about Fairfield's fat black crime wave.
The Wading in blog features some reviews of movies now available on DVD.
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