Does Chronic Google Use Cause ADD?

In the beginning of this course we discussed the topic "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and it seems to keep coming up as the course goes on. The article we read discusses how the internet allows us to "cut to the chase" and how we are no longer looking for books or any other animate object that we can hold in our hands to find information, we just simply Google it.

Being able to Google any question you could think of and getting the answer as quick as you can click is basically instant gratification when it comes to finding out information. So since there are so many shortcuts online, along with hyperlinks and advertisements, I cannot help but wonder if this is directly correlated with the rise in cases of Attention Deficit Disorder. Since there is so many things in your face whenever you get onto a website, rarely does an individual read a whole story before clicking on another link. Also since we are able to "Google" absolutely any question and find as many answers as we please, there is no reason for us to go out searching in a library for information unless required by a teacher.

So since we are all so used to "Googling" on a daily basis, when it comes to being in class and school is it hard for people to pay attention through out the whole class time because it is not all instant gratification like the internet is? Since Google is shortening our attention spans, is the abundance of internet use we do daily that is causing the higher rates of Attention Deficit Disorder cases? What do you think?

Shirky's Socail Skills

While reading the first chapter of Shirky’s text, Here Comes Everybody, I was struck by several things. The first, I was pleasantly surprised at how easily readable this book is and interesting. The next thing that popped into my head is that we really are becoming a global village. Can you imagine that story about the lost phone from Ivanna’s perspective? How interesting would it be to watch a story unfold around you like that and be one of the millions of people watching rather than really having anything to do with it?

My question is whether or not this global village is a good thing. For me it triggers thoughts of what life was like for women in the pioneer days. They would be secluded from pretty much the entire world, all day every day while the children went to school and men went to work. Even if they were lucky enough to have a daughter to stay and help them, that daughter is still not the same a friend or social interaction. Many of those women literary lost their minds from lack of human interaction and those that did not generally were depressed. This is just food for thought, but what if those women had had Facebook? That sounds stupid, but really? If Margret could have chatted Betty three farms and 30 miles over after her husband was out until way passed dark and didn’t feel like talking about his day maybe she would not have gone and jumped into the river that caught her up in the current. This is essentially what Shirky talks about with the human need for interaction. People can’t live without it so over long periods of time we have figured out how to engrain it into every part of the busy lives we have created. Now we have the ability to spend five minutes (or hours) on Facebook and then move on with our day feeling as if we had interaction. It is still not the same as talking to someone but it certainly beats hanging out in the cabin all day while John works the fields and Peggy and John Jr. run off to get learned.

The Internet Generation.

I was really interested in Ch. 6 of Ambient Findability this week when the author talked about the beginning of the internet. It's hard for me to imagine a time when only a small group of people were interested in the online world, but it makes complete sense. I mean, if someone approached me and asked, "What would you say if I told you there was a database where you can find virtually any answer that you've ever needed?" I would think it was a complete farce!


I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like without the internet. Although I didn't really use it until the end of my middle school years, I always have had access to it. If I think back hard enough I can remember when we actually had to "dial up" to be online, and you couldn't use your phone at the same time you were online. When I think of times like that and then look at my young cousins who use the internet like its nothing, I can't help but feel a little old. How cool is it that we were part of a generation that saw the beginning of the popularity of the world wide web?! Our kids will be reading about this stuff in history books.

All of the readings we have done have allowed me to have a more accepting mentality of the internet. I adamantly insist that I am technologically disadvantaged, but I know that that's not true. I mean, I can use my smart phone (well, kind of) and I can find what I need to on the internet most of the time. Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like if you moved to America from a third-world country. What would they think about a culture that is so interconnected that it could be a concern? How long would it take an adult to completely learn how to use these technologies? Sometimes I take being raised in such a technology savvy for granted, but to an extent, we all are guilty of that.

Mooer's Law

"An information retrieval system will tend not to be not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it." -Calvin Mooer

In chapter 3 of Ambient Findability, Mooer's law makes an appearence. At first I only glanced at it, skimming over the section. But going back over the passage, several ideas and questions were raised.

Firstly being, how did Mooer manage to prove this and make it into a law?

But the other ideas were mainly about how accurate Mooer was. Wasn't I proving his very law by only skimming over the reading in chapter 3? The chapter readily held all this free information, but it was 'troublesome' for me to read it at the time because I wanted to be doing other things.

Mooer is a computer scientist, and I think the internet and computer are prime examples to see his law functioning. On paper, by people having access to all this free and easily found information, it should make people these days a whole lot smarter. I mean, people become more learnt the more school they attend, gaining more knowledge-- so with the internet full of billions and billions and billions of facts and topics to discover, the users these days should be bursting with knowledge.

But I think we all know that's not true. To sit down and comb through all the search engines and all the false leads, and read all the multitude of articles would be more work than the pay-off. It's too troublesome, and it's not used. Just like Mooer stated.

If you think about it, human society is set up to act like that, I just think the creation of computers really helped to magnify it.

Think of the common response when a friend is giving you a long jargon-filled answer. "Speak English!" Or people's natural reactions to skip over reading the agreement contracts and just click 'I Agree', or even not noticing signs at restaurants that state they're out of onions. People like things simple, they don't like a lot of extra information that's going to take them out of their comfort zone, their everyday pattern, something that will make them actively work more.

So even though it's hard to prove, I agree with Mooer's Law.

Is Facebook Ruining Our Generation?

With all of the texts we have been reading, it makes me wonder more and more what is available about ourselves on the internet. I believe we are in the age of the internet. More and more people resort to the internet to find out information, rather than referring to a book, article, newspaper, or even a person as a source for information and answers. So what do we do when we want to find out information on a certain individual? We look up their Facebooks. Facebook might as well be called Creepbook. Once something is on the internet it can never be erased (contrary to what people believe).

Not many people take advantage of the privacy setting Facebook offers, and it could become detrimental to themselves in the future. If you do not take the effort to make your cellphone number private on Facebook, did you know you know anyone can find that? I did not know that until someone told me my number was on Facebook... I did not even add it to the information, it was just on there because I access my Facebook from my cellphone. If you type in a random persons name, you can look at their pictures, see what city they live in, where they go to school, and anything else they make available upon their page. You have to make a serious effort to make all of these things blocked, but many people do not take the effort and realize the danger that outs themselves into.

Not only is your information out there to complete strangers; but future employers look up potential employees as well. Looking up an applicants Facebook is just as common as looking up an applicants criminal record. If an employee looks up your Facebook and sees pictures of you drinking, using vulgar language, and posting inappropriate things... does that look professional? Is that someone you would want representing your company, teaching your children, or treating you medically?

All of this information we are putting on the internet for the world to see may be ruining our generations chances for potential jobs and putting our safety at risk? So is Facebook and networking sites detrimental?

6 Degrees of Separation. Fact or Fiction?

I have always been curious about this so called "Six Degrees of Separation". This is saying that everyone in the world can be connected through six people or less. Essentially, A knows B who knows C who knows D who knows E who knows F, so A and F are 6 people away from knowing each other. Seem reasonable? I think so, too.

Morville brought it up in Chapter 6 of the text Ambient Findability along with his discussion of any document on the Web being 19 clicks away from any other. He wrote about the discrepancies of this theory on pages 142-143, so I decided I wanted to look into the 6 degrees of separation and see what others are saying about this theory.

My first stop- Wikipedia. The first thing I found on Wikipedia was this image, which sums up the 6 degrees of separation pretty nicely.

In this image, each of the six people in the middle have multiple other friends who are all over the map. The six people are linked through "friend of a friend" connections and are six degrees from each other. Wikipedia continued to give me information, such as who started this whole theory. His name is Frigyes Karinthy, a Hungarian author, poet, playwright, journalist and translator. In 1929, Karinthy wrote a short article in which he proposed that the world was shrinking because our technology was increasing rapidly. A synonym for this theory is the small world phenomenon. There has also been a play and movie written about the six degrees of separation. The Wiki-article then talks about the different tests that have been performed on this theory, which led me to other articles on the internet.

Second stop- SixDegrees.org. This is a website started by Kevin Bacon, who we all know from the running joke that every actor is connected to him by 6 or less connections. The "About" page of the website tells the reader what the purpose of the organization is. Basically, Kevin Bacon has sponsored this website which capitalizes on the fact that the world is small and one person can truly make a difference. Check it out if you have time.

Third and Final stop- The Guardian: a United Kingdom news site. David Smith, a technology correspondent for the magazine wrote an article in 2008 titled "Proof! Just six degrees of separation between us". This article discusses an experiment Microsoft performed in which they studied billions of instant messages and discovered that between 2 people, there are approximately 6.6 degrees of separation. The article then goes on to discuss several other experiments that have been posted and that are all discovering that with the social networking sites we have now, the degrees of separation are becoming smaller.

In the end, I found that the six degrees of separation are not only reasonable, but have been proven throughout the years. I think that as our technology becomes more advanced, our degrees of separation will continue to shrink because the information we have for finding other people will become greater. I think it will be interesting in the future to see where our media takes us and discover who else is just a few connections away from us.

kthxbye.

rachel.l.marten

Findable Information

When we first started reading Morville’s text, I associated findability solely with negative connotations of my person being found by someone I did not want finding me. As we have worked our way through the text I have not only learned a lot but also have come to understand that finadability can be a very good thing, especially when you are dealing with information and your ability to find it.

We are constantly surrounded with information about everything, offers for products or events, why one product is better than another, who to vote for, how to change your own oil, etc. Sometimes we do not choose these things in examples such as fliers, but most of the time we are choosing the information we are looking at whether it be an on-line article or a social networking website. The point is that, as we have said in class a million times, whatever we want to know is at our finger tips. With a click of a button, it will be yours.

But is that really true? Also as we have worked through this book we have talked a lot about how Google works and whether or not it is truly functional and for what purpose it functions. I do not know a lot about Google except that they have some pretty lofty goals which include creating a computer that functions like a human brain. At this point, I am very skeptical. Google is incredibly hard to use for academic purposes. Or even just finding something reliable. If Google could come up with a computer-human-brain thing then why can they not come up with a better organizational system. Rather than having to dig through all the mess that ends up on the internet, people pay high sums of money for academic article databases.

It also makes me wonder if information really is at our finger tips. With new websites that give you all the instructions and tools to make your own site, for free, about anything you want, the internet has become bogged down with a massive amount of unhelpful and useless information that has to be sifted apart from the gold of reliable works. I ask my question again. Why do they not have a better organizational system? I just went to Google to look through what categories they offer. It would be a good idea for them to let people know about all the services they have, because if we used the tabs or categories or what you would like to call them, Googleing would be easier and more productive.