Gør Google os dumme?

Engang for ikke ret mange år siden var internettet noget, man kunne begive sig ud på en sjælden gang, hvis man var blandt de heldige.

Det var et spændende, uopdaget sted, der dog ikke altid levede helt op til forventningerne. Hvad skulle man egentlig bruge det til, spurgte mange sig selv.

I dag er internettet blevet en integreret del af vores dagligdag. Vi tænker ikke rigtig over, at det er der - men vi vil have svært ved at klare os uden. Ikke mindst uden Google, der giver os svar på alt mellem himmel og jord på millisekunder.

Det allestedsnærværende internet påvirker os naturligvis som mennesker, men hvordan er endnu et ubesvaret spørgsmål.

Amerikanske Pew Research Center forsøger med en ny rapport at finde svar på, hvordan nettet påvirker vores intelligens.

Jeg har tidligere omtalt Pew Research Centers rapporter om fremtidens internet, og forudsigelserne fra rapport nummer tre finder du her.

Rapport nummer fire er baseret på interviews med næsten 900 personer - forskere, virksomhedsledere, konsulenter, forfattere og folk, der arbejder med teknologi-udvikling.

"Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and rendering of knowledge," lyder en af konklusionerne blandt andet.

"There are still many people, however, who are critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools."

Sådan påvirkes vi af Google
Som en uddybning af det sidste er der publiceret nogle citater fra undersøgelsen, hvor en række personer forholder sig til et spørgsmål, som den amerikanske forfatter Nicholas Carr flere gange har stillet: "Is Google making us stupid?"

Her er et uddrag af besvarelserne:

Nicholas Carr:
"What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking."

Hal Varian, Google, chief economist:
"Google will make us more informed. The smartest person in the world could well be behind a plow in China or India. Providing universal access to information will allow such people to realize their full potential, providing benefits to the entire world."

Paul Jones, ibiblio, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill:
"Google allows us to be more creative in approaching problems and more integrative in our thinking. We spend less time trying to recall and more time generating solutions."

Esther Dyson, longtime Internet expert and investor:
"The problem isn't Google; it's what Google helps us find. For some, Google will let them find useless content that does not challenge their minds. But for others, Google will lead them to expect answers to questions, to explore the world, to see and think for themselves."

Alex Halavais, vice president, Association of Internet Researchers:
"The question is flawed: Google will make intelligence different. As Carr himself suggests, Plato argued that reading and writing would make us stupid, and from the perspective of a preliterate, he was correct. Holding in your head information that is easily discoverable on Google will no longer be a mark of intelligence, but a sideshow act.

Being able to quickly and effectively discover information and solve problems, rather than do it ‘in your head,' will be the metric we use."

Robert Acklund, Australian National University:
"My ability to do mental arithmetic is worse than my grandfather's because I grew up in an era with pervasive personal calculators…. I am not stupid compared to my grandfather, but I believe the development of my brain has been changed by the availability of technology. The same will happen (or is happening) as a result of the Googleization of knowledge.

People are becoming used to bite-sized chunks of information that are compiled and sorted by an algorithm. This must be having an impact on our brains, but it is too simplistic to say that we are becoming stupid as a result of Google."

David Ellis, York University, Toronto:
"Google isn't making us stupid - but it is making many of us intellectually lazy. This has already become a big problem in university classrooms. For my undergrad majors in Communication Studies, Google may take over the hard work involved in finding good source material for written assignments.

Unless pushed in the right direction, students will opt for the top 10 or 15 hits as their research strategy. And it's the students most in need of research training who are the least likely to avail themselves of more sophisticated tools like Google Scholar.

Like other major technologies, Google's search functionality won't push the human intellect in one predetermined direction. It will reinforce certain dispositions in the end-user: stronger intellects will use Google as a creative tool, while others will let Google do the thinking for them."

Hvad mener du?
Du kan læse alle besvarelserne fra de kloge hoveder her, men lad mig høre dit eget svar på spørgsmålet: Gør Google os dumme?