Is Google changing your ability to process information and retain information?

No, I feel that google makes things more accessible to me, and I learn more. I rarely need to google things that I would have known anyway.

YES, I absolutely feel I know how to get the best searches out of google. I am the queen of that kinda stuff.

I do use Google often, for ease. It has become my 1st go to source. I think I can search well, but I really have nobody to compare myself to! I rarely feel overwhelmed because it’s fairly easy to weed out the garbage. I don’t feel as though I retain less, I actually feel like I know more because information is so readily accessible. On a negative note, I did have to drag my children to their Grandparents house to show them encyclopedias and how to use them!

**I have noticed on the kids papers at school they have to show more than 3 resources; ensuring they are not just using the internet to secure all their info.

I google things all the time…...

Thankfully i don’t think i have got to the point where i use it that much that i don’t retain information any more… anything that is important to me i DO retain anyway – if it not for any other reason but just so that i don’t have to google it again….

and i don’t really think its a problem to use google for research for school kids etc… perhaps not all the time as you say bythebay…its an amazing resource and forever never ceases to amaze me at how much information you can get your hands on…a world of excitement me thinks!!! all the possibilities!!!

might go and google something now just for fun…

I use Google services at least an hour a day. But, with the search I always hit dead-ends on the things I want to find. Despite popular belief, everything is NOT on the web (yet). On the topic of overwhelming, Google is just an innocent bystander to the Information Overload problem.

On the concept of processing information, how many people actually look past page 1 of the search results?

I’ve been having memory problems lately, and google becomes a kind of backup memory. Usually it is a word I can’t remember, and if I type the words like that word, google will often come up with what I’m looking for faster than my brain can retrieve it.

It isn’t making me stupider. If anything, it’e keeping me from getting stupid so quickly.

As a research tool, it’s a great place to start. I think it helps to have a good sense of the world that has been built from other sources of experience, because then you can have a great nose to detect whether information passes the smell test.

It helps to have access to other info sources, like academic libraries and academic search services. So much information is not accessible through google. I don’t feel overwhelmed, though. Just stupid sometimes, but that’s because my brain doesn’t work like it used to. A side effect of the meds, I think.

I am a Google master. I can find almost anything. More than 50% of my computer technician skills are directly created by Google. You’d be amazed how often you can solve computer problems when you Google the error message. My mantra: odds are someone else has dealt with this problem before, let’s let them solve it instead of making us solve it again.

At times I feel a bit weak without it. It’s one reason I really want to get an iPod Touch.
Well, weak is a bit of a wrong word. I don’t see it as a weakness to rely on Google. I see it as using one of the strongest tools of knowledge we have. Like with Google Maps. Having a printout map is always a good idea. But wouldn’t it be awesome to have unlimited maps, the world map, with satellite view, at any zoom level, and it gives you directions from point to point!

Google, and other search engines, also allows my memory to be sharper. Just today I wanted to find a Youtube clip of a certain British game show blooper. I was able to put in the keywords I remembered and there it was, first page result. I didn’t have to remember the exact address or the game show’s name, the keywords were enough to successfully recall this.

I also think that it wastes less librarians’ time. I can research a topic well in advance, if I really need help then I can go talk to a librarian and they can help me continue finding data or whatever I need. But I can also observe the search techniques the librarian uses and adapt them to my overall search abilities.

I’ve said this before so I’ll just briefly say it again here: I strongly believe school should include a class for teaching how to use the Internet successfully. Things like being able to determine the credibility of a source, verifying a site is legitimate, being safe on the Internet in general, the basics of how the Internet works, etc. It’s such a huge part in our lives now, and it’ll be such a bigger part as time continues, it makes sense to give kids a big head start in using it and not being used by it.

@dynamic, between Google and the History Channel, I am never alone. I agree, a lot of knowledge is becoming not knowing what the answer to a question is, but to really understand the question, and its ramifications. Google is fantastic if you understand correlations. I feel the movie “Desk Set” portended Google. Just like the Thanatos Solution and Prozac… which has led me on google to Kevin D Majeres

I wonder if Google is giving us more superficial knowledge, and less in-depth knowledge? Is as little knowledge a dangerous thing? Will caring about acquiring knowledge be roadkill in the advent of a life of instant knowledge?

As early as junior high (many, many years ago now) I came to the conclusion that knowing the answer is not as important as understanding the question and knowing how to find the answer. Google is an assest in the quest, but as a first source it probably is not doing as much to teach us how to think as old-school resources did.

Could I have used more italics?

@augustlan: If you want to be Chandler Bing, you’d italicize a different part of that sentence.

Could my response be any more italicized?

I loved Chandler Bing!

I don’t really google things for actual information (c’mon, I use wikipedia for that!!!!), but it’s my first source for things like song lyrics, directions, and other simple information like that. I still have trouble finding what I’m looking for a lot, so it’s definitely not the end all, be all. I don’t think it’s google that’s the problem – I think it’s wikipedia. How many high school students aren’t learning how to do research, but are just going to wikipedia and just throwing whatever they find down on the page, regardless of how accurate it is?

Google is just a facilitator, an access road to some legit information, some not so legit information. I definitely use google a lot, but I don’t think it has changed my ability to process or retain information; knowledge is knowledge, regardless of where it comes from. If it means being able to quickly access the dates of the French Revolution in a few mere seconds rather than having to go to the library, I still will read those dates and process them.

<—...googling “chandler bing”

ohhhh chandler i miss thee! <3

i think that of course google helps as far as finding out information quickly and whatnot, especially when it comes to last minute science homework, but i definitely think it has a huge negative effect on a lot of people who use it. i think it makes a lot of people more susceptible to taking any information they read as fact.

I think google has helped me with my information overload problem, because it’s so much easier to not click on all the extraneous sites listed, and stick to the original search. I used to get trapped in the dictionary and the encyclopedia because the words and entries were right there on the same page and had to be read.

I learned to read when I was very young, and our local library only had a few hundred books. I dreamed of one day reading them all. When my Dad took me to the library in the city, I almost passed out, because I realized I would never be able to reach my goal.

It’s changing my thinking on how information can be searched and found.