Google is “white bread for the mind” says university professor.

Gullibility galore, say I. What I can’t believe is that the article does not mention the WikiMEDIA disease.

Google is “white bread for the mind”, and the internet is producing a generation of students who survive on a diet of unreliable information, a professor of media studies will claim this week.

“Google offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments.

She believes that easy access to information has dulled students’ sense of curiosity and is stifling debate. She claims that many undergraduates arrive at university unable to discriminate between anecdotal and unsubstantiated material posted on the internet.

technology.timesonline.co.uk...

Welcome to the machine.

So we have to look forward to an even dumber generation.

Have anybody seen the movie called Idiocracy? Well it’s not funny anymore, because we’re getting there in a hurry.

No kidding. And half the people who do "research" using Google don't even know how to utilise it properly to filter for relevant content. And don't even get me started on how results can be skewered with creative usage of 'Google-bombing' and 'link-spamming' blogs and other places where you can drop comments.

How is this any different from people ten or more years ago simply not knowing
how to do research when they arrived in college.

Colleges have to have Library orientation for all these idiots.

Generalizations made by jaded college professors aren't worth the time it takes to read them.

Google is what it is and that is a fantastic resource.

University professors can require legitimate citations for sources students use in their papers.

Google is good for providing quick answers when quick answers are needed, but no school should allow internet research as a sole research tool.

Of course, for a price, the internet can provide access to the professional literature and many libraries are digitizing their libraries.

If students are showing up at college ill-prepared to do academic research, that's not the fault of Google.

Instead of griping about the reliability of Google database plug the kids in to one you find “reliable” or better yet build one. Don’t take the computer away that is a step backwards.

It said she has been teaching for 18 years…lets see 1990… not much of an internet back then.

reply to post by Legalizer


Difference now is people can 'appear' to be smart and did their research, when in fact they didn't even get past page 3 of whatever search result was returned on Google.

Anyway what I got from the article isn't so much an attack on Google, but an attack on lazy and sloppy research via the use of Google. Basically an improper use of the tools available to one.

Edit to add: There is also the issue of reading but not comprehending...

[edit on 14-1-2008 by Beachcoma]

Well, is information from the government or channels like FOX NEWS reliable??

End of discussion...

I find the premise of the OP preposterous. Inability to distinguish between anecdotal and solid data existed long before Google. There was plenty of bad science (alchemy with its philosopher's stone etc). Even among historians, there has always a good deal of using assumptions, heresay and whatnot, long before Google.

To me, Google is a godsent, both professionally (I'm in the technical field) and for all sorts of hobbies -- music, history etc.

The problem is real and widespread.

It’s called “cut and paste” mentality.

A few years back a study group questioned University of Washington graduates of physics, mathematics, engineering, etc, (PhDs actually), and asked them to perform a rudimentary task.

They were given a flashlight light bulb, a wire, a AA battery, and were asked to light the bulb.

Over 70% of the grads could not do so, even though they went into involved explanations into how an electrical circuit could not be completed with out the second wire.

In comparison, in other countries kids in middle school did it with out a second though.

Sheeple.

A good old friend of mine wrote an article, he called “A text book as a weapon of mass destruction.”

He investigated how American educational institutions choose text books, and found out that with all those thousands of titles available, they are all printed by only two companies, and the people that write them are not professors with credentials to worry about, but anonymous editors.

There is even a web site that concerned parents put together after reading what is being taught to their children.

Googling home work is just how it’s done these days, copy-paste.

I remember when universities banned text massaging in the classrooms, because students cheated on exams by exchanging text messages.

Google is a FILTER, and while the user has options, it is the people of Google that have the ultimate control of how they want to filter information, and they have been doing it for years.

Google developed an automatic censorship bot for the Chinese government, what makes anybody think that it’s used only in China?

Originally posted by abovetech
Well, is information from the government or channels like FOX NEWS reliable??

End of discussion...

bloody well said..