Growing Up on Google
August 4, 2008 - ד' אב תשס"ח by admin
There have been recent discussions about the effect that Google is having on us and it’s negative impact on our ability to remember information, our ability to think deeply about things and to focus and concentrate.
My 6 3/4 yr old daughter has given me a very different view into the next information / knowledge age and how different it is from the world I grew up in. Over the past six months she’s started to use the Internet a lot more frequently and recently started searching Youtube and Google for her favorite Hannah Montana videos, fashion designs and African animals (elephants, giraffe, lions and rhinos.)
Increasingly she’s started to spend extended periods of time in front of the computer learning new things, not just playing games or watching videos. Today she spent 60+ minutes exploring the wonderful world of African Rain Spiders. I watched her use Google, Wikipedia and blogs to read about these spiders, look at images of them and imbibe a huge amount of knowledge.
Her ability to regularly perform a thorough search and retain focus and knowledge contradicts the current view that we are now no longer able to concentrate, focus and learn in this multitasking / continuous partial attention world. Her mind is obviously able to deal with the hyperlinked world a lot better than her dad’s.
I’ll be learning from her in the future.
