Nicholas G. Carr Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.“ A Presentation by Craig Betts for Sydney University

1. Is Google Making Us Stupid?
By Nicholas G. Carr
Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I
zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.“
A Presentation by Craig Betts

2. Nicholas G. Carr
http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-
videos/185695/september-25-2008/nicholas-carr
Digital Enterprise : How to Reshape Your Business
for a Connected World (2001)
Does IT Matter? (2004)
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to
Google (2008)
Nick wrote the much-discussed article "Is Google Making Us
Stupid?," which appeared as the cover story of the Atlantic
Monthly's Ideas issue in the summer of 2008. He has also written
for the New York Times, Wired, the Guardian, the Financial Times,
Strategy & Business, Advertising Age, and many other periodicals.
He has written a personal blog, Rough Type, since 2005. In 2008,
he was named to the Encyclopaedia Britannica's editorial board of
advisors.

3. Marshall McLuhan- The medium is the
message
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was
a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar — a professor of English
literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist.
McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media
theory.
McLuhan is known for the expressions "the medium is the message" and
"global village". McLuhan was a fixture in media discourse from the late 1960s
to his death and he continues to be an influential and controversial figure.
More than ten years after his death he was named the "patron saint"
of Wired magazine.
........As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in
the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of
information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also
shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be
doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and
contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information
the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of
particles.

4. Rough Type
Banished
JUNE 24, 2009
Do not ask for whom the Google tolls. It tolls for me.
I woke up this morning to discover that I no longer exist. The
entire contents of this blog has been erased from Google's
index. Every post. Every last bon mot. Gone. Without a trace.
Here, by way of illustration, is what you'll get if you google the
word "google" and restrict the search to the roughtype.com
domain:
Now I know how Adam and Eve felt after God kicked their sorry
asses out of Eden.
I'm on my knees. Please, Google, I beg of you, let me back into
the promised land. I swear I'll never use Bing again.
UPDATE: I'm unbanished. See comments for details.
Posted by nick at June

5. The main thrust of the Article
The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on
long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun
mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online
media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I
was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he
wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my
reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e.
I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”

6. A cyber briefing paper
information behaviour of
the researcher of the future
11 January 2008-
University College London
http://www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf

7. What is the “google generation”?
The `Google generation’ is a popular phrase that
refers to a generation of young people, born after
1993, that is growing up in a world dominated by the
internet.
Most students entering our colleges and universities today
are younger than the microcomputer, are more comfortable
working on a keyboard than writing in a spiral notebook, and
are happier reading from a computer screen than from paper
in hand. Constant connectivity – being in touch with friends
and family at any time and from any place – is of utmost
importance 1
According to Wikipedia, the phrase has entered
popular usage as “a shorthand way of referring to a
generation whose first port of call for knowledge is the
internet and a search engine, Google being the most
popular”. This is offered in contrast to earlier
generations who “gained their knowledge through books and
conventional libraries”.

8. Our verdict: A qualified yes, but text is still important. As
technologies improve and costs fall, we expect to see
video links beginning to replace text in the social
networking context. However, for library interfaces, there
is evidence that multimedia can quickly lose its appeal,
providing short-term novelty.
They have zero tolerance for delay and their information
needs must be fulfilled immediately?
Our verdict: No. We feel that this is a truism of our time
and there is no hard evidence to suggest that young
people are more impatient in this regard. All we can do is
repeat the obvious: that older age groups have memories that
pre-date digital media experiences: the younger
generation does not.
They prefer visual information over text?

9. Our verdict: On balance, we think this is a myth.
Research in the specific context of the information
resources that children prefer and value in a secondary
school setting shows that teachers, relatives and
textbooks are consistently valued above the internet.
We feel this statement has more to do with social
networking sub-culture and teenagers’ naturally
rebellious tendencies. Its specific application to the
world of education and libraries is pretty questionable.
They need to feel constantly connected to the web*
Our verdict: We do not believe that this is a specific
Google generation trait. Recent research by Ofcom21
shows that the over-65s spend four hours a week longer
online than 18-24s. We suspect that factors specific to
the individual, personality and background, are much
more significant than generation.
They find their peers more credible as
information sources than authority figures?

10. Our verdict: This is a myth. CYBER deep log studies
show that, from undergraduates to professors, people
exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal,
`flicking’ behaviour in digital libraries. Power browsing
and viewing appear to be the norm for all. The popularity
of abstracts among older researchers rather gives the
game away. Society is dumbing down.
http://www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf
They prefer quick information in the form
of easy digested chunks, rather than full
text?

11. Is Google making us stupid?
Or maybe lazy?