Since this article- Is google making us stupid- was published in 2008, the problem author worried about is becoming true. Actually, as a student who never used traditional book to search information, I feel like using internet to search what I want has been, and always been the rule. We don't have that much time to fight with so much things. Google gave us a big favor to find what we exactly need in short time instead of a system, time- wasted knowledge storage.
But as a youth who spend so much time on Internet. I can still fell the change. Our communicat tool changed from renren(Chinese Facebook ) to Weibo( Chinese twitter), which contains more information and much shorter articles. Just as the google article mentioned, people can't concentrate on one article for a lone tiem. Look at how renren try to alive! The hot articles and images all have a long title- which could describe almost all interesting information in the article or images folder, which could scrab people's eyes at the first glance, and which could tell people how interested this article or image is without arduously click or even read it.
We are receiving ten times or hundrads times more information than before, and we are indeed changing our think mood to adapt fast changing information. What google gave us are pieces of knowledge point, rather than the whole, complete knowledge system. Whether google will accelerate the speed we accept information, or it will finally distry our knowledge system? Or whether this high speed and point-based information acception will trian our brain to classify and connect all useful informaiton, and turn them into a larger scale knowledge system? We don't know the anwser. We cannot even say this change is good or not.
The only thing we can do and we must do is adapt this change. Think about what TV bring to us and changed our lives? People spend less time speaking with neighbors and hanging out with friends. Families choose to watch TV during dinner rather than talk about what happend today. These kinds of changes are what people never think about before 1950s. But how about now? We totally familiar with them! Internet brings us a new life style, and it will continue to be e trend. We need to adapt it and get benefit from it as soon as possible. Change makes people afraid, but change is not awful. Falling far behind the change would be the only thing make you lose many opportunities.
Weibo and Twitter absolutely wipe out our patience. By only 140 Chinese or English characters, people can get all the information they need. Update news around the world, friends thoughts, or useful tips are all in 140 characters. It’s easy. It’s fast. Even real blogs can’t compete with them. People’s reading patterns have shifted to a new way. I don’t want to comment on whether we become stupider because a change of reading and thinking style. But I always agree to look at this question from another aspect every now and then. What kind of changes are we experiencing? Are there any opportunities we can grasp as a market person? On this point, I really agree with Nan’s point on catching up with the fashion and always prepared.
ReplyDeleteNice job, Nan! This article enlightens my thoughts. I have the same feeling with you about searching information on Google as a student. But also, accompanied with convenience, Google makes us stopping thinking. As for the changing, some people have already adapted it like us, and others have difficult to get use to it, such as our grandparents. After all, whether it is good or not, time will tell.
ReplyDeleteInternet isn't coming but has already came. lol.
ReplyDeleteI like the part that you state the phenomenon of the titles of articles become longer and longer on Internet. Indeed, including the newspaper and magazine, all communication tools seem wanna conclude every highlight in their titles to attract read or click. The pace of the society is so fast that people do not want to leave a meaningless glance on what they do not interested in!
Beside these, I wanna add the long titles will definitely be the trend of promoting articles on the Internet since the information on the Internet is soooooooo much that you must attract consumers' attentions at the very first glance!
Last, good job :)