by Michelle Lentz

 
image by Darren Hester thru Creative Commons

–
There’s a lot of discussion happening right now about Nick Carr’s controversial article in The Atlantic Monthly: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In addition to Carr, there are other voices chiming in, including Maggie Jackson (Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age) and Rick Shenkman (Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter). I heard these two speak, in particular about how the Information Age is really an “ignorant age” on the Diane Rehm show on Tuesday.

I take issue. I think we’re getting smarter.

I work a lot in instructional design and eLearning. The world of adult learning is changing. We learn faster and can take in more types of information – we have access to more types of information. It’s a fascinating time to work in the industry.

There’s a buzzphrase you hear now at all the eLearning conferences: informal learning. I call it watercooler learning. People have all this information about their jobs tucked away inside their heads. With Web 2.0 tools and content sharing, we can not only get people to share that information, we’ve got people willing to teach each other in an informal setting. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to tap that previously hidden knowledge.

There is a lot of reference in the article, and in other supporting articles, to a lack of picking up a book and reading. I still read. In fact, I try to devour a new work of fiction every other weekend. It’s an escape mechanism for me. I will never stop loving the feel of the traditional, paper-bound book. No Kindle for me, thanks. I want to smell musty pages and turn the crunchy paper. I love it. I can’t imagine wanting to read less. I would go so far as to say that I now have easier access to things like the NY Times Book Review, as well as Amazon.com, which I wouldn’t have without the Internet. Those two sites, in particular, often guide me to new books.

Is my attention span shorter? I don’t know if it was ever long. Growing up, Sesame Street (you know, the TV) was my babysitter. I’m of the TV generation – I don’t know life without it and it was the dominant technology of my youth. Do I now skim web pages to grab relevant information? Yes! Because I’m smart enough to be able to pull out the relevant information. If an article really grabs me, I’ll read the whole thing. Do I twitter constantly? Yes! But it has actually improved my technical writing, helping me better condense relevant information into short concise sentences. Not everything you read needs to be lovely prose, after all. Not only that, Twitter has introduced me to a whole community of people, many of whom I’ve gone out of my way to meet in person and then carry on in-person, intelligent communication.

I don’t disagree that there is now a plethora of information out there. For the last two weeks I’ve only managed about one post a day on this blog because I’m suffering from a bit of information overload – or maybe information fatigue. I’m almost bored with the idea that there is a new startup every day. You’ve got to really dazzle me now, I guess. But times like this ebb and flow. Whether my mind is a bit jaded or not does not mean that “Google” has made me stupid. It means I need to work harder at separating the signal from the noise.

I’m a big fan of Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You. I honestly believe that the strategic thinking employed in video games is a useful type of learning. I believe that honing my research skills both in a library and online is a good use of my time. And I believe that although we are learning differently now, and parsing information differently, that difference isn’t a bad thing. It’s evolution of information, and thinking. And I enjoy it.

I want to close with a quote from Stephen Downes  on Stephen’s Web, in reference to the Carr article:

Sigh. My response is very simple. I read constantly. I write constantly. I also work in images and multimedia. If Google is making me stupid, then I am forced to conclude that without Google I would have been some kind of super Einstein or something. 

–
Events, news, apps, and more – let me know at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, via Twitter, or via Pownce.