Schinckel.net

In the latest issue of The Monthly, Gideon Haigh explains how having access to so much information, and in particular access in the way Google presents it, is making us less smart. There’s still lots to like about this magazine: it provides a new voice in Australian culture, having extended articles on interesting topics. I see it as similar in some ways to the Independent Weekly, a newspaper that’s new to Adelaide, but easier to handle in a couple of ways - firstly being a smaller format. It’s much easier to take with you, and therefore take your time reading it. The articles are a bit more national - although there are several international articles in the various editions I’ve read.

So, does Google make you dumber?

Google is a very new phenomenon. It wasn’t the first Search Engine on the Internet, but it is certainly the first one to become a household name. Everyone knows what Google is, and, as Haigh indicates, people think that Google has all of the answers. You can find virtually everything on Google, and I use it as a first place for finding information now. I guess the advantage I have over the next generation is that I have a background in finding information gathering - that is, I studied at University when libraries were the best source of information.

I also have a healthy level of skepticism; I try to think about the source of every article I read, and judge it for bias. Students who have only ever known Google and the Internet tend not to understand that some sources of information are more reliable than others. I think there is lots to like about Google, and the ease at which it finds information. The suggestion that sites that are popular tend to become more popular is made, and I concede that this appears to be the case. However, as a self-publisher, I find that my site has a fairly decent PageRank, just by actually writing lots of stuff that I know a bit about.

Generally, Google is very good at finding the best source of information on a topic. Whilst most people don’t go past the first page of hits, that’s because the rest of the information tends to be a little crap. There is lots of junk on the internet, but using the correct search terms means that it’s possible to find anything about anything, quickly and with little effort. The key here is knowing how to best use Google to search. Whilst Google has a great, simple interface, there is huge power underneath.

Students, especially post-secondary, must know how to search using some of the advanced methods, or even just using quotes to search for a phrase, rather than a list of words. And Google, at this time, is not the be-all and end-all of searching, especially for academic purposes. Things like Medline, and specific search engines (often not publicly available, or not free) provide full-text indexing of many academic journals. I look forward to the day when Google Scholar has all of this information, free. I haven’t done much with Google Scholar, as I’m not actively studying right now, but I suspect that there are indices that are not accessible through this interface. And having access to the titles of articles, and in some cases abstracts, isn’t enough. I want there to be full access to full text of journals. I don’t know how journals will manage the transition to free access, or even if they will, but it looks like a rosy future, when I don’t have to travel from University library to library to try and find a particular issue of a particular periodical. I often use the adage: I don’t know, but I know how to find it out, and this aspect of knowledge is taken into account by Haigh when she quotes Julian Sefton-Green (a lecturer from my old University, UniSA):

…It’s much more important that people know where to find out… it’s going to be much more important to be able to rank, order and interpret information than [to know] the information itself; to have the appropriate critical and analytical tools.