It’s not surprising that everyone loves Google, as it continues to be the topic of so much controversy. And personally, i love the controversy as it reflects so much on people. Yesterday, i brought up that people were starting to think about its impact on privacy. Tonite, i ran into an article questioning whether or not Google was ruining students abilities to think. Of course, i read this article as i was taking a food break from websurfing for sources for my thesis.
I’ve got into the most hysterical of habits. I’m sitting in my room, surrounded by the 92 books that i deemed “thesis related” and did not move to my mother’s in preparation of my upcoming move. Yet, academics and other writers are *terrible* indexers. Thus, as an example, i just picked up one of Lacan’s books and Googled for the concept/term that i knew he said at some point in the 296 page book. Much to my dismay, i learned a long time ago that magically waving my hands at a book and screaming “grep” will not result in figuring out what page a quote is on. Thus, i Google. Google gives me a page number from someone’s paper and i look it up in the text. Voila, i’ve got my source and can read the full context of what it was that i wanted.
Google has definitely made me lazy, although i’m not sure how much. I’m a terrible note taker. In fact, i can’t read my own handwriting so unless it made it to the computer, i can’t read it. Thus, my books are all underlined but i can’t read the notes along the side, so i’ve stopped writing more than one word there. Regardless, sticky notes do not ease my problems in finding an idea from a book that i’ve read. But writing notes onto the computer has many other problems. So, i’ve given up on note taking for the most part. I read, voraciously, and never remember the source for something i’ve read. Thus, when i invariably need the source for something, i rely on Google. Some student, somewhere has referenced the idea in one of their papers. Thus, i find out what they are quoting and go back to the original source to reconsider that section of the text. (Of course i am also fundamentally aware that you cannot ever trust someone else’s source. And given my aversion to the library and my love of half.com, this recognition resulted in my need to move 16 boxes of books home last weekend. But still…)
Google may have made unmotivated schoolchildren unbelievably lazy, but it has also helped us lazy academics focus on the ideas and have our notetaking eased into oblivion.
We’re going cross country in style! Think Thelma & Louise!