Monday, November 7, 2011

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

I am admittedly addicted to the internet. I think this article was particularly written to people of my breed. I don't really think Google is making us stupid. Lazy perhaps, but that is a completely different thing. I use Google every day. It makes my life a lot easier and it enables me to get a lot more done in a day than would have otherwise been thought possible. The knowledge at the world is at your finger tips, that is an amazing concept.

Yes, because of the internet, people's attention spans are lessening, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It just means that content creators have to lessen the amount of unnecessary information and make the important information more riveting.

It is suggested that Youtube content creators keep videos under 5 minutes in order to keep viewers around for the whole video. If you click on a video that is over 10 minutes, you can assume that most people will click away before they even start the video. 10 minutes used to seem like a very short amount of time, but in the internet world, it is an eternity.

Yes, I groaned at the thought of having to read six essays before even starting this course. Yes, I groaned again when I found out one of them was nearly 20 pages. That could be because "Google is making us stupid," or because I'm a teenager, and I would rather do a few other things with my time. I don't mean for that to sound harsh, just honest.

The internet  and Google enable us to get things that could have been done in 10 months done in 10 days. It is a beautiful gift, yet admittedly there are some major faults and disadvantages to this new uncharted world, but overall it is what it is, and it's not going away anytime soon. After all this blog component of this very course would have never existed when my parents were in high school, and many teachers see the addition of blogs like this to be a very positive addition to school curriculum.

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