Google and Making People Smarter

The following is a posting from Kevin Drum, 
a/k/a.Calpundit (www.calpundit.com).  After last week's 
seminar, I thought that it might be of some interest.

LOVING AND HATING GOOGLE....The Washington 
Post  has an interesting story about Google today that 
contains this interesting (and, I might add, completely 
unsourced) factoid:

    The stacks of a university library can be a rather 
lonely place these days. Library circulation dropped 
about 20 percent at major universities in the first five 
years after Internet search engines became popular. 
For most students, Google is where all research begins 
(and, for the frat boys, ends).

I am constantly reminded of just how good and bad 
Google is. I can't count the number of times that I've 
located obscure information starting with nothing more 
than the vaguest wisp of a remembered phrase, which 
led to something that jogged my memory, which in turn 
led to something else, which in turn finally led to exactly 
what I was looking for. And for all that it's frustrating 
when I'm in the middle of one of these searches, they 
usually don't actually last more than a few minutes. It's 
remarkable.

On the other hand, without that initial wisp I never would 
have gotten anything. A decently broad general 
knowledge of events is still necessary in order to get 
much out of Google in the first place, and it's also 
necessary in order to filter all the crud out and figure out 
whether Google has led you to a reasonable site or a 
crackpot spider hole. In fact, one of the worst problems 
with Google, I think, is that it makes research too easy. 
You can quickly find obscure information (hooray!) and 
then make an idiot out of yourself by not doing a further 
bit of Googling in order to understand the context 
around that information (boo hiss!). Google is great for 
finding specific facts in short chunks, but lousy at 
providing larger context and meaning.

In a way, Google is an intellectual amplifier: it makes 
smart people smarter, but it also makes dumb people 
dumber, since a naive Google search can easily lead 
you to information that's actually less useful than 
knowing nothing. In other words, don't throw out your 
books quite yet.

The actual posting can be found at:

http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003279.html

or

http://tinyurl.com/34qbw

***************************************
Stuart Levine
Fisher & Winner, LLP
Baltimore, Maryland  21201
Telephone:            410.385.2000
Telecopier:            443.927.7075
Cellphone/Pager:  410.802.5817
[email protected]
weblog:  http://taxbiz.blogspot.com
http://www.taxation-business.com
*********************************************




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