Google 'Makes People Think They Are Smarter Than They Are' 227
HughPickens.com writes Karen Knapton reports at The Telegraph that according to a study at Yale University, because they have the world's knowledge at their fingertips, search engines like Google or Yahoo make people think they are smarter than they actually are giving people a 'widely inaccurate' view of their own intelligence that can lead to over-confidence when making decisions. In a series of experiments, participants who had searched for information on the internet believed they were far more knowledgeable about a subject that those who had learned by normal routes, such as reading a book or talking to a tutor. Internet users also believed their brains were sharper. "The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you can enter any question, and you basically have access to the world's knowledge at your fingertips," says lead researcher Matthew Fisher. "It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source. When people are truly on their own, they may be wildly inaccurate about how much they know and how dependent they are on the Internet." In the tests searching for answers online leads to an illusion such that externally accessible information is conflated with knowledge "in the head" (PDF). This holds true even when controlling for time, content, and search autonomy during the task. "The Internet is an enormous benefit in countless ways, but there may be some trade-offs that aren't immediately obvious and this may be one of them," concludes Fisher. "Accurate personal knowledge is difficult to achieve, and the Internet may be making that task even harder."
smart/intelligent != knowing a lot of facts (Score:5, Insightful)
Being smart and/or intelligent isn't the same as knowing a lot of facts. Google can help you keep a lot of facts at your fingertips. The smart part (or intelligent part) is being able to learn about complex things, applying things you already know to new situations, etc.
Google may ruin a game of Trivial Pursuit (or bar trivia or whatever) but it isn't a substitute for doing a good job planning a process, designing a machine, etc.
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In addition to what you said knowledge of subject does not mean never having to consult a reference. Chemists used to have CRC handbook on their shelves, for a reason. Many a C programmer has an "in a nutshell" reference handy etc, or used to have before Google.
Its one thing to know I need to use "newtons law of cooling" to solve this problem and look up the specific formula, its another if you are searching "how to determine how long it will take before items can be handled safely out of the parts oven"
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Many a C programmer has an "in a nutshell" reference handy etc, or used to have before Google.
I suddenly became an amazing programmer right around the time StackOverflow got popular...
Re:smart/intelligent != knowing a lot of facts (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in elementary school we were taught how to use the library to find what we needed. Most people don't get the point of the lesson; it's not teaching children how to find books, it's teaching children how to find information. Lessons learned back then apply all of the time, even though it's much less common for me to look at a paper book for my information.
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> Sometimes being smart is knowing how to access the resources needed to do obscure things
No. Being knowledgeable about a subject is being able to make use of reference sources.
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The internet can bring us information but we have to develop critical judgment on our own. That takes experience. However I think for someone willing to put in the effort, having a vast array of knowledge available can be very useful and an aid in the process of developing thinking skills.
I like it a lot more today when I can quickly look up nearly anything at all. The old days, when it took a trip to the library to consult likely out-of-date reference books, were certainly not as good.
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Heavily biased towards grey beards who set interrupts with jumpers at some point in their lives.
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Re:smart/intelligent != knowing a lot of facts (Score:4, Insightful)
Adding-
Often the web is used to supplement thing you already know, or perhaps have forgotten a step in the process. Being able to reference how to remove a set of brakes doesn't make you qualified to work in an autoshop, and as anyone who has suffered through a Chilton manual knows, the example given never matches your own circumstance. Ever.
Further, this gets into the philosophical questions about knowledge, and what does Epistemology really mean. Reading a book about WWII isn't the same as storming the beaches of Normandy, so the nature of this knowledge is heavily abstracted. Consider this the answer to the dolts that bleat out "he plural of anecdote is not data". My personal experience means more than your abstraction.
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Not only this, but being intelligent also means knowing what facts to filter out. If you Google airplanes and see a post by someone that says contrails contain substances to turn us all into obedient brainless zombies, you should use your i
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but look for corroborating evidence from trustworthy sources before fashioning a protective anti-contrail aluminum foil hat.
You should have used Google. You would have learned that tin foil hats don't protect against the chemicals being dispersed via CIA-operated jets through the contrails. Dummy. You need a mask.
The issue I have with the study is the conclusion about people who are "left on their own" thinking they are smarter. They're comparing Google use to book use, and the people who use books to learn were NOT "left on their own". Yeah, someone who is left on their own isn't as smart as someone who uses books to learn t
Google should be last port of call (Score:2, Interesting)
Facts? It doesn't even do that. It puts a lot of random noise at your fingertips, only a small proportion of which are factually accurate and not biased by the interpretation de jour.
The signal to noise ratio of search engines is nothing short of appalling, and it's made even worse in cases like Google by their deliberate skewing of results to reflect their vested interest, ie. advertising. The web exhibits swarm behavior, always reflecting the m
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Interpreting the results of a Google search are part of 'Googling it' and is more or less what you describe. e.g. never trust Wikipedia.
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Exactly. I know plenty of "smart" people that are just good at reading and remembering things. One guy I know can tell you where a sentence appears on a page of a 300+ page book he read the night before, but he isn't very good at applying knowledge, e.g., he's terrible at fixing things or doing much problem solving.
So, just because you can read, retain and regurgitate things doesn't make you intelligent, IMO. It means you're good at reading and remembering things and that's about it. The whole "book smart"
Re:smart/intelligent != knowing a lot of facts (Score:5, Insightful)
Being smart and/or intelligent isn't the same as knowing a lot of facts.
There's also a very underappreciated value to experience. You can be the smartest person in the world, and have all the world's facts at your fingertips, but if you've never experienced something personally, there's a good chance you just don't have the mental framework to begin to understand that situation. This is how you get very smart people explaining to actual (very experienced) poor people how they have no business "letting" themselves be poor, and must just be inferior humans in some way. This is how you get "mansplaining" and "whitesplaining".
Sometimes the best thing to do, even if you are a really smart person (heck, particularly if you are a really smart person), is to STFU and listen to people who have different experiences than you. If a lot of them are saying the same thing, but it doesn't jibe with the information you have, you are almost certainly missing something.
Let Me Google That For You (Score:2)
"I'm armed with Google and have a Masters Degree in speed reading." <--- Every internet know it all
How is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
How is this news? Do Yalies suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect?
I had to Google 'Yalies'.
Now I'm smarter.
Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, offline you also have people who take old misconceptions or simplifications, and will fight tooth and nail against anyone about them, even actual experts, but the internet seems to have really amplified the process. It probably does not help that over the last few decades we have REALLY devalued actual expertise on topics. The people most likely to get their ideas repeated are pop versions of their field, people who can create accessible and pandering content rather than dry but actually correct publications.
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The internet is just a terrible source for up-to-date information. For a start, in a search it's rather hard to weed out what is "current best-practice". Google search doesn't even have knowledge of date, and even if it did it doesn't have content knowledge of date. I can publish the world view of 1960 in a document and it looks like it happened today as far as Google is concerned. Worse, the ranking is based on links. Linkage isn't knowledge driven, it's interest driven. It might not be driven by anything
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Wait, what?!?
What better source do you know? Do you know how we used to find up-to-date information before the Internet? We didn't, we relied on months old printed articles or years old books.
Fallacy (Score:3)
Define "smarter". Natural intelligence + easily accessible and disposable facts does not make one more or less intelligent. The problem is the old school definition of intelligence was tested through the ability to recount facts. It was not a reliable indicator of the level of intelligence of an individual. Whether gathered from a book or a search, facts are not always useful without the ability to understand, interpret, and deduce what is not represented by the facts.
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I think the intended take away was that people who rely on the internet as an external source of information over estimate their own knowledge even when that resource is unavailable to them regardless of how intelligent they are.
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I think the intended take away was that people who rely on the internet as an external source of information over estimate their own knowledge even when that resource is unavailable to them regardless of how intelligent they are.
That's a completely different set of skills though. That relates to the individuals ability to retain information and regurgitate it. I had comprehensive testing done on myself and in most natural intelligence areas I was 97th/98th percentile but I can't read a paragraph from a book and regurgitate the information immediately. Take that identical test and make it a picture in a book instead of words and I can tell you almost every detail.
Modern understanding of intelligence, various difference in auditor
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I have a brother that likes to pose convincing, plausible, yet false ideas to otherwise bright people and particularly likes to pick on Mensa members and most of the time he is able to convince them he is correct. I'm not saying that their science is good just what I thought they were proposing.
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I have a brother that likes to pose convincing, plausible, yet false ideas to otherwise bright people and particularly likes to pick on Mensa members and most of the time he is able to convince them he is correct. I'm not saying that their science is good just what I thought they were proposing.
Most Mensa members are just like everyone else, the only difference is that they can solve puzzles a bit better. It doesn't make then any less susceptible to being conned by a good story.
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You are right but he likes to pick on the ones that think they are smarter than everyone else he finds it amusing. Poorly written inaccurate or incomplete wikipedia articles are another source of amusement for him.
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Precisely. Who is smarter: someone who tries to keep a whole domain of knowledge in their head just in case they need part of it, or someone who knows where to find the information in ANY domain and critically analyse it for accuracy?
It seems to me that the study missed the mark: what they SHOULD have been studying was whether Google increases or decreases people's ability to think critically about a subject. It's possible that people put the blind faith in Google that they used to put in academic journal
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Do Not Believe Everything You Read On The Internet - Abraham Lincoln
Not so new (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the Internet, we said the same things about people who relied on books for knowledge.
Also, xkcd. [xkcd.com]
what? (Score:2)
How is it not your own knowledge after you've internalized it? Just because you searched for it on google or some other search engine as opposed to a book doesn't make it somehow not information you've retained. This is the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time.
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Re:what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is the smart thing to do -- offload data storage to some external less mutable source that's available 24/7. Sure -- the source content could change/vanish -- but at least there are checksums and validation methods available. Inside your brain? Not so much. I don't really see this as an issue, more of a feature. Save your brain for managing the pointers and handling the data that's actually important to everyday life.
Re:what? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not unique to Google. Before Google, I'd look up stuff in reference manuals. If I didn't use it regularly, I'd forget it, but I knew where the books were. Google is just a more convenient version of that.
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So far, the tech stuff that I used to use reference manuals for, has been reliable, though I suppose I could get into trouble if I happened on the wrong site.
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Really? You never keep any data you read in your brain? If that's true there are bigger issues at stake. I don't have 24/7 access to google and wouldn't want it, so maybe I'm the anomaly. I just don't see this "study" as worth the time it took to perform. Even if it is accurate, who the hell cares?
No, people have always been like that (Score:2)
People always think they're smarter than they other... other people that is... I'm infallible.
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I'd like to introduce everyone to my shadow. This AC has been following me around for weeks at this point. Every thread I post in, he can be relied to make some dumb comments. At one point I thought it could be a couple different people. But its just the same guy. :D
And he thinks he's belittling me even though he's going out of his way to find any thread I'm posting in... it is sort of adorable in that tiny dog that yaps in an adorable way... but then won't shut up sort of way.
Anywho, don't mind him. It is
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I'm very happy for them to read my past posts. I occasionally make mistakes, but I admit it when I do... and... meh.. go for it. I think I make a lot of good points and there are a lot of posts I'm quite proud of really.
I like that you just admitted I was right that you're stalking me though. :D
You're so stupid. If I were you, I'd take on different personas so as to imply that I was multiple people and not just the same pathetic douche bag.
But you're not that smart... so oh wells.
I am sort of impressed by h
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Honestly? I have yet to see a good one. Might be Dunning-Kruger in action here.
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What was the last bad point you saw me make... I could have a better idea as to the legitimacy of your point if you did that. :)
I make mistakes like everyone else. But on average I think I do quite well.
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Why do I test something if I'm so certain? Well, you have that backwards. I am certain BECAUSE I test.
If I didn't test, then I couldn't legitimately be certain could I?
SCIENCE! :D
As to me being dead wrong, you still have yet to tell me anything I was actually wrong about. You made some very vague comments in the past, but as you'll remember, I challenged you every time to be specific and you were evasive for about a week. At which point I realized that you were never going to actually back your bullshit up
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It is funny, I'm having another conversation with a different AC in this thread, and your nonsense is proving me right again. I should link him to your post so he can see what I'm talking about.
Thanks :)
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I am pretty sure you're a different person because your sentence structure is different.
I could be wrong. You could be taking a cue from a previous post where I teased the guy for making it so obvious. But you sound different.
You're also being more polite and rational. The other guy basically just opens with an insult, makes no effort to make any sense, and then will just lie about stuff.
Also, your comment about ACs being more profitable is questionable. I was going to say it was tautology in that you're sa
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Here is an example of the crap he sends me:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
Most recent post as of now. Imagine getting nothing but that for weeks.
I try telling jokes. I try to start up an intelligent conversation. I try just flaming him. Nothing works. He's like forum cancer. :P
He follows me from thread to thread and just spews bullshit at me. So yeah, he's kind of distinctive. :)
How do you define smart? (Score:2)
The article seems to conflate content knowledge with being smart.
I would argue that raw analytical skills are much more important than content knowledge. Being able to regurgitate information is only marginally useful, and its most important value is that you're equipped with a framework and a lens through which to examine problems.
However, absent analytical capabilities, your ability to use your knowledge and past experiences to solve problems is severely limited.
Google makes people think they are knowledg
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I suppose knowing all the different species of snakes doesn't really make you very smart. However, some knowledge, (e.g. how to build a nuclear reactor), probably does imply intelligence.
I don't think all knowledge is equal. I think some knowledge is trivially easy to understand and other knowledge can be very difficult to understand. Google drastically increases the accessibility of nearly all knowledge, which basically gives the trivially comprehensible knowledge to everyone for free.
Try to read the wi
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I suppose knowing all the different species of snakes doesn't really make you very smart. However, some knowledge, (e.g. how to build a nuclear reactor), probably does imply intelligence.
I'd say knowing which species of snake live in your area, and how to tell the difference between venomous and non-venomous look-a-likes (coral snake or eastern king snake? water moccasin or banded water snake?) makes you smart - you've prepared yourself for what we referred to as "activities of daily life" when I worked in physical rehab/therapy. Although running across a snake and having to ID it as potentially lethal vs nonlethal isn't a daily occurence (at least I hope not... and I live in the woods).
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I'm not saying it's bad to know your snakes. The reason I came up with the example, is because I was just reading wikipedia articles about snakes at the time. My point is that the information is really easy to understand (i.e. even dumb people are capable of doing it). The fact that you know about snakes isn't a bad thing. It is probably a good thing. But it is not indicative of high intelligence (relative to other humans).
Some information is indicative of intelligence. (i.e. the information that dumb
Being smart is about skills and speed, not facts. (Score:2)
But it can't do a task it doesn't already know how to do.
A human child will have far fewer facts that the computer at easy hand - but can figure out how to do anything, if given enough time. While some things may take years, most will be learn-able very quickly.
Intelligence does not depend on the facts you know, but instead on the skills you have that let you learn new things.
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I had a computer as smart as you included in my radio shack 100 in 1 kit.
As smart as which other humans?
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Try switching nouns - consider this possibility. Given the limitless potential of humans, don't you think it is possible for a human to eventually create a bicycle capable of reaching the moon?
Yes, we reached the moon - but with a rocket, not a bicycle. Bicycles are too limited, it took a much better vehicle to reach the moon.
Some day we may create something that is as intelligent as humans. But it will be much more similar to a human than a computer i
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No. People are limitless, but computers are not.
Do you have any evidence to support this?
Try switching nouns - consider this possibility. Given the limitless potential of humans, don't you think it is possible for a human to eventually create a bicycle capable of reaching the moon?
This is a semantic argument. That's because a bicycle has an implicit definition (i.e. lating for 2 circles). A bicycle is a vehicle, a car is a vehicle, and a saturn 5 rocket is a vehicle. Why do people talk about flying cars and not flying bicycles? Because a car doesn't imply wheels, but a bicycle does. It is certainly possible for a "car" to go to the moon. If we have a personal vehicle that can one day go to the moon, and it is similar in size and shape to
Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." - Albert Einstein
it's true (Score:5, Funny)
Read some random Youtube comments for a few mintes--you'll feel like a fucking genius!
Yeah, Yeah (Score:2)
Are you "Google smart?" (Score:2)
I certainly think this is true in the sense that inaccuracies can get repeated so widely and so quickly on the internet, that even moderately intelligent people accept the inaccuracies as fact when, if they would just think for a little bit, they would realize that they are complete fiction. I call this being "Google smart".
Less time wasted on stupid trivia (Score:5, Insightful)
Yale professors' ideas of being knowledgeable in a subject come from their experience lecturing students.
I've been getting paid to do programming for almost 30 years. Google has changed programming such that you no longer have to memorize the useless trivia that college professors lecture about.
I program in three programming languages on a daily basis, JavaScript, PHP, and Perl. Some days I barely touch Perl. But the difference between my programming style today and 15 years ago is that I never use books. I don't memorize the exact syntax or idioms of any language. Anything that I can find within 5 minutes on Google I don't bother to learn anymore.
As a result I can focus on improving my ability to program as a generalist, and I'm very good at what I do. If you asked me to write a bit of non-trivial code in anything but pseudo-code, I would very likely not get the syntax exactly right (unless you asked me to write it in C, which I learned before the days of Google).
Google allows us to not be smart at things that are a waste of our time to learn in the first place. We can have a much more broad knowledge of many subjects and use Google to drill down on specifics, rather than having the type of knowledge that professors crave, being completely pigeon-holed into one speciality where you have all of the trivial detail memorized.
Can I rattle off every type of tree structure, and tell you what tree is good for what problem? No. In the days of Google, that type of knowledge is useless. You ought to know when you need to use a tree structure of some sort and you can spend an hour or two making that determination, or if the decision is critical you can spend a day on it. Effectively, those weeks or months we spent in computer science/computer engineering classes learning all of these very specific attributes of data structures were a waste.
To generalize, consider everything you can easily find with Google to be part of your knowledge. Memorizing it would be a complete waste of time. But that very waste of time seems to be what these professors were measuring (and valuing!)
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Unless you have just a couple of books, that'll probably take something in the 90-6000 seconds interval. Also, Google can point you into many more "books" than what fits your bookcase. This is one of those cases where a quantitative difference is so big that it becomes a qualitative difference.
Your knowledge isn't your own (Score:2)
"It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source."
As you move up the education food chain, its not about what you know but being able to cite about what others have discovered. In other words, no one cares what you think you know, i.e., your opinion. They care about you being able to prove what you know by referencing external sources of value.
JIT Knowledge (Score:2)
I lightly skimmed TFA, and it appears they are concerned with how well we explain/use what we have found as an answer on the internet.
I think this is an oversimplification. I use to read books on various computer languages and could program in them sufficiently before the internet (yes I’m that old). Now I don’t learn languages as deeply for various infrequently used constructs, but look them up as needed.
Now here is the thing -- once I have used a quickly found piece of knowledge on the intern
I believe it (Score:2)
Hell... (Score:2)
Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
All cyborgs now... (Score:2)
We're all "cyborgs" when it comes to search. But, that's the whole point.
I doubt I could program at even 1/10th the speed without EITHER the Internet, or about three-six large books (a language book, an OS API book, and then whatever I'm actually working on). Does this mean I'm not really a coder? Or does it just mean that asking a blacksmith to work without fire is dumb?
but... (Score:2)
You just realized we need Google? (Score:2)
Has anyone busted out the quote from Phaedrus? (Score:2)
Welcome to the Singularity (Score:3)
You thought the Singularity would be about replacing you. It isn't. We will augment you. Welcome to the brave new world where your intelligence lives in both wetware and silicone.
Smart isn't knowing lots of things .... (Score:2)
... it's knowing where to find them. Google is just a starting point, as is Wikipedia. Smart is absorbing this information, filtering and processing it and building a semantic model in your head useful for solving a problem at hand. Smart isn't necessarily loading your brain up with trivia in the hopes that it will come in handy some day.
what does it mean to be smart ? (Score:2)
Is a preteen boy smart when he can memorize 40,000 digits of pi? Or is he really dumb for having directed his energy in such a stupid direction? Should we feel dumb the first time we see the word 'omphaloskepsis'? As many here have said- knowing stuff isn't the same as being smart.
New members of Mensa (the hi IQ society) often want to explore what intelligence really means. Experienced members are tired of that discussion and just want another beer. IQ tests don't satisfy everyone's idea of intelligence but
Exhibit A: Jenny McCarthy (Score:3)
Google does increase ones knowledge (Score:2)
But, as an otherwise bad movie pointed out, there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.
It only makes you smarter than you are... (Score:2)
...by making your friends dumber than they look.
Memorization = intelligence? (Score:2)
Smarter isn't the same as knowledgeable (Score:2)
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now people think that they're experts even when they cannot demonstrate mastery of the subject without having access to resources. It's the difference between an open-book test and a more traditional testing technique.
I can't deny a certain amount of perverse pleasure from watching people with poor cell phone signal squirm because they are attempting to consult the Internet for an answer to something that's part of their responsibiltiy that clearly they cannot do on their own and aren't able to do so.
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Yes.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Inte... [amazon.com]
Here's the thing (Score:2)
Doesn't bother me one bit if someone looks the facts up and presents that as part of their argument or statement. I'm just delighted to not be engaged by BS. I like to learn, too. Further, I suspect that the very act of looking something up, when that actually happens, is educational at least to some extent to the one doing the looking. In other words, I think it does make us smarter. It's certainly smarter behavior. Also, I outright question the need to know everything in specific, when you are both correc
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> Doesn't bother me one bit if someone looks the facts up and presents that as part of their argument or statement.
That is the problem. Something finds something on the internet using Google and presents that as a "fact". And, then presents themselves as an expert on the subject because of that "fact".
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And, then presents themselves as an expert on the subject because of that "fact".
Which is actually the real problem. Just because you possess a specific fact about a subject, why should I consider you an expert? You can present yourself as an expert all you want, but I don't have to accept that.
Basically, I ask myself, since you are generally only considered an expert if you are in possession of a comprehensive amount of knowledge from authoritative sources, why is googled information authoritative, or even comprehensive?
That doesn't mean that looking things up and presenting an argum
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That's part why the trades have been organized in an apprentice/journeyman/master structure. An apprentice either doesn't know anything or knows enough to get into trouble. The journeyman has experience but has not really encountered enough situations deviating from the common training materials or circumstances to necessarily know how two handle all conditions. The master has encountered enoug
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Open book exams are, by far, the hardest.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
No, the tendency was to not think of one's self as the expert. That didn't make one dumb, that made one ignorant. Now people think that they're experts even when they cannot demonstrate mastery of the subject without having access to resources. It's the difference between an open-book test and a more traditional testing technique. I can't deny a certain amount of perverse pleasure from watching people with poor cell phone signal squirm because they are attempting to consult the Internet for an answer to something that's part of their responsibiltiy that clearly they cannot do on their own and aren't able to do so.
I have about 50 computer books at home that I haven't opened in 10 years. Prior to the excellent resources we have online I depended upon those reference books for many coding functions that are under my responsibility. I can't possibly memorize every single thing that I need to know for work. Depending on what you're asking me to do, I may squirm without Google too. I know what I need to look up. I could write you psuedocode that approximates what I want to google, but I can't remember every single nuance of every little API I use. I doubt anyone can.
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I think this is more of a situation for anyone who reads YouTube comments.
But having access to Google information is a great help to the average joe. Back in the good old days when I was programming before google. There were things that I just wouldn't be able to code. Say accessing a piece of hardware, or trying to communicate with something else. Just because I had no reference to it... So I just couldn't do it. Post Google, I am confident in the stuff I am working on, because if I don't know how to
It doesn't matter how knowledgeable I am (Score:4, Interesting)
any more (or anyone for that matter).
What matters is how knowledgeable the cyborg comprised of me + net is.
There are two kinds of cases where it still does matter how well I can do on my own.
1. Where time is of the essence and I don't have time to hyper-learn.
2. When I have passed the "Warning: You are leaving the twitterverse" signs on the dirt track off the highway.
What's important in most cases today is how effective cyborg-me is at systematically formulating good questions then systematically acquiring, integrating, evaluating, and using knowledge.
Stop thinking what matters is how good a human individual is at doing something/knowing something. That doesn't matter that much anymore, and will matter less in the near future. I like maintaining my celestial navigation skills, but it's really just for nostalgic reasons.
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Maybe that was written by somebody who uses Google.
Re:LOL ... (Score:5, Insightful)
How is reading a book, and reading the same information on a webpage different. I'm curious how the location of the material makes a difference.
I gain a great deal of information from the internet, much more that I had access to when I was in college, 35 years ago. The question isn't the information, it is the ability to process it, so that when the resource is not available, you can still recall it, in a useful manner.
IMHO there is a continuous path between acquiring knowledge, to understanding, to mastery, to wisdom. Not everyone gets past Knowledge.
Re:LOL ... (Score:4, Interesting)
In my anecdotal experience, I have seen a couple of places where the conversation goes something like ...
A: Do you know what you're doing?
B: Sure, I googled it last night, no problem
Crash
It seems that, more than reading a book or any other way, people overestimate how much they know after googling.
I don't think it's the material, I think it's the medium, and people just more superficially skim stuff on the internet.
I'm not saying you can't learn things from the internet. But for the lazy among us it's too easy to think you learned more than you did.
I suspect many of us have witnessed that, and in many cases done it ourselves.
Hell, I've even seen TV commercials by companies which basically say "just because you read a web page, doesn't mean you can replace a professional". Which means SOMEONE else is clearly aware of this. So it's not like this isn't something which has been observed for some time.
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Google is just a tool for accessing all the information someone has taken the trouble to put online. However the information put online is often riddled with inaccuracies, full of contradictory sources, and usually only helpful if you already posses a personal knowledge base that enables you to tell useful information from the 100% unadulterated bullshit.
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