Journal Entry 7

Supplemental Readings

Is Google Making us Stupid?

The subtitle of the article is “what the internet is doing to our brains.” This article is a look at our brains on the Internet. My initial thoughts when reading this article was yeah it’s true we have become hyper and instant gratification junkies. I have found myself getting frustrated searching databases for supplemental periodical reading material for this course. If the periodical article is not full text in either html or pdf, forget it. I don’t have time to wait for interlibrary loan or other alternate ways to retrieve an article. (In a normal full semester course, there is time to wait days for a request.)

Carr writes about his and his colleagues use of the Internet; “the more they use the web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.” One person referred to his quality of thinking as “staccato,” thus “reflecting the way he quickly scan short passages of text from many sources online.” The article states that reading unlike speech “is not instinctive skill for human beings.” We must teach ourselves to make the neurological connections in our brains between the printed letters and the idea they represent.

Are we really losing the ability to focus on multi-page articles or have we trained ourselves to move quickly through the text. If we slowed down, could we not retrain ourselves to yet again read deeply? The adult mind is “very plastic” and “takes on the qualities of these technologies” (Carr, 2008). The exposure to new technologies influences our thought patterns. “Deep reading” was linked to “deep thought” (Carr, 2008).

The fast pace of surfing the net does not allow for contemplation and making our own associations. Sometimes connections are made while doing something else. The words, phrase and ideas that we have read bounce around and make new connections. Our use of technology for searching is not making us stupid; however, the way we use it may contribute to the frantic pace of our thinking.

Carr, N. (2008) Is Google making us stupid? The Atlantic.com. retrieved June 12, 2008.


The Library in the New Age

Darnton briefly examines four milestones in technology. The first milestone was “the invention of writing” (Darnton, 2008). It “was the most important technological breakthrough in the history of humanity” (Darnton, 2008). Next is the codex. The codex replaced the scroll; this format (a book) allowed for pages to be turned. It allowed for dipping into and out of the text. It changed “the reading experience” (Darnton, 2008). The next technological advance was the printing press. The printing press allowed for the mass production of text: books, and pamphlets. The most recent milestone is the advent of electronic communications from ARPANET in the 1970s to worldwide by the 1990s. Darnton presents a timeline of these milestones: from writing to codex (4300 years); from codex to movable type (1150 years); and from movable type to Internet (524 years). He then breaks down the timeline of exponential development of the Internet; there were search engines within 19 years and from search engines to Google in only 7 years.

Next Darnton moves on to the stability of information. We think that in this digital age of information that the apparent transient or impermanent nature of information is a new phenomenon. Darnton demonstrates that even the printed text can be mutable. “Voltaire toyed with his texts so much that booksellers complained. As soon as they sold one edition of his work another would appear, featuring additions and corrections by the author” (Darnton, 2008). Customers complained and “some even said that they would not buy an edition of Voltaire’s complete works… until he died” (Darnton, 2008).

The Google Book Search project with the digitalization of the books of major libraries has lofty goals: all books available to all people (with internet access). But the question is which book of which edition of which book will be digitized? Don’t researchers and historians need or desire to access all versions of a text to see the evolution and check for the validity of the work. Google is great and all but don’t expect it to replace the library. Google is a medium that is corruptible and may fall away like floppy disks, magnetic tape, and records.

Darnton, R. (2008). The library in the new age. The New York review of books, 55(10).


Final Thoughts

Both of these articles reiterate things we have discussed in class. How do you search? Information literacy is now as important as reading literacy. Will the library go away? The traditional library of hardcopy materials only is gone. Libraries have moved forward adding digital information sources. These digital sources are fast, and may be cheaper to have (online access to periodicals require subscription service but no physical collection to maintain). Will everything someday be available through Google or some other online source? The Internet Public Library is a wonderful tool. Will all libraries be available solely online? Or will libraries remain in the hybrid state with brick and mortar buildings housing hardcopy materials, providing access to digital information sources, and a hub for community activity? The hybrid model would keep the digital divide from growing by allowing access to all users not just those who can afford it.