Wiser Machine?

Review on
Is Google making us Stupid?
Source: Carr, N. (2008) Is Google making us Stupid? Atlantic Monthly (Jul/Aug)

This review is for discussion based on these questions:
“How has the ability of students to access whatever, whenever, wherever through information and communication technologies changed the way they interact and process that information? What are the new skills and abilities needed to cope with this stream of information? What changes have you seen in your own students - if any?”

Making sense of what we find online:
"We stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock" (Carr,2008) - Just like reading and selecting literature reviews for research, we rely (and trust) the search engine so much to do the work, that we sometimes tend to ignore the real reading and digestion of the information.

Carr (2008) talked about skimming instead of reading... It might be OK for us to skim through (the content we find online), because we've learnt the basics and know what to skip and what to focus/concentrate on. But for students, (especially those working on literature review for research), it's like "teetering on the edge of precipice" for me to see how they select contents without really reading! And if they don't really read through what they copy from the Net, they won't know how to argue/justify if they are asked after that.

Net's influence affecting other media:
I agree with Carr (2008) about people's minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media that the traditional media have to adapt to the audience's new expectations. I saw this from the designer's perspective, where the design of the DTP media (e.g. newsletters) has to have a 'capsule summaries' and 'info-snippets' in the first page itself, even though the newsletter is only 4 pages long. :-S As for readers/audience, they tend to skim through these summaries and selectively read the details. If this is also a habit of our students (for the case of text books, lecture notes, etc. in any form of media), I can't guarantee that they could learn much in their campus years.

During our time, we had to cover a lot of pages just to get to the real point we want. I still do that today for new subjects that I need to teach, and it helps me in elaborating the points in detail. I don't have good memory, but when I read more, I understand better and somehow I could remember things.

"In the past the man has been first, in the future the system must be first" (Taylor, n.d.):
Such a bold statement from Taylor. Is that why men are replaceable, because system is at "perfect efficiency"? Meaning, knowledgeable men are not a competitive asset of an organisation anymore? Does that mean knowledge now is totally in the system, including tacit knowledge? Then, academicians are replaceable and we are not needed eventually? (I use the word 'eventually' because we are still needed as a guide and motivator for online-learning, today.)

Countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine:
Carr (2008) has a good way to relate to Plato’s and Squarciafico’s words, regarding humans being “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom”, where technology is leading to “intellectual laziness” making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. The “worry” will never end, because there’s always new literacy being introduced and emerged every millennium, year, day or even second.

Carr (2008) also mentioned “evolving under pressure of information overload and the technology of the instantly available”. The word he uses is “evolving”, but I don’t think that “instantly available” would diminish the information overload; it might be worse!

There is a nice (dark) prophecy by Kubrick, mentioned in this article: “As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence”. This quote is worth to ponder on…

The reason why we need to continuously learn and relearn...,
- Sha @ Teaching and Learning
05 Oct 2008