The Google Pundit

Ross points us to Michael Moynihan’s takedown of the “Google pundit,” that species of blogger who opines on a topic while knowing very little about said topic.* Which makes me think of a second article from this month’s issue of the Atlantic that is also not online: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”**

I would argue no, but it is making us lazy. Google allows us to access literally anything we want to know in 15 seconds flat. Thirty if we’re not sure exactly what we’re looking for. I would argue that my actual knowledge base is much, much larger than what it would have been without Google: I know tons of things I would have simply wondered about 10 years ago.

That being said, Google definitely promotes laziness. Why bother reading a new book when I can read a half dozen summaries in 1/100th the time? Why bother memorizing, say, Spanish conjugations when I can use a language translator? Now that I can take the Internet everywhere via my iPhone, why bother remembering the last time a player hit .400 (1941) or when the Edict of Worms was decreed (1521) or who the congressman in Florida’s sixth district is (Cliff Stearns, apparently)? Once upon a time, I’m pretty sure I had memorized all of those facts. Now, there’s no need. And I guess that is kind of a bad thing…

*Wait, isn’t that all of us?

**The piece is actually more about the Internet and what it’s doing to our attention spans and how we communicate than Google specifically, but the question is an intriguing one.