Research?

[Ewobbit]

Here and there I have lamented about the new methods of research so different from how I learned; when you made notes out of a card catalogue and went up into the stacks and hoped the periodical wasn't on loan to the sister library 300 miles away.

Granted at least part of the problem is most likely teaching an old dog new tricks. And somehow almost invariably when I try to use "Goggle" to look for something, no matter where I start down the rabbit hole, after a variable length of time I almost always end up looking at a naked pair of tits.

Which, in and of itself, considering I'm male, not gay, and, although old, injured, and ill, not quite dead yet is always a welcome sight (or site), but just not quite where I was trying to get. "Twenty-seven clickz to nipplez" should be a hit song any time now. IF it isn't already.

Any road, I was actually researching research (don't ask) and ran across this chestnut almost a decade old; and immediately thought of the AH regulars and wondered what thoughts some might have.

For myself, I can remember them making the same observations about television. And, while I can't say they were necessarily wrong, I also note that the people who invented smart phones grew up with them. (and take that any way you want)

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/

So, assuming you can actually sit still through the whole thing, what's your thought almost a decade after it was written?

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Two observations: Goodle can never standardize how language is used. At best Google is the latest fashion, and fashion changes. Two, writing depends on imagination rather than a collection of senses, such as videography. Tomorrows fiction will be high def vids.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

An observation from a old man...second old man I guess...probably third...

Any who...I grew up, as you did, with the cards and the Dewey Decimal System.

Yet, google is a wonderful tool...when researching "current" events. I quote current as anything that has happened since the advent of digital, even some analog, storage media. Before then you may still have to look up that information in the card catalog and then search the stacks.

But as time marches forward, more and more information is being added to the net each day. Soon, the entire information about the history of the world will be in the "cloud" just waiting for someone to need it for research. Of course with that will be the inevitable misinformation items which you will have to weed through on your quest for research nirvana.

 

[AMoveableBeast]

A terrifying article, and shamefully accurate in my case.

The trouble with today is that everyone knows everything, but no one understands shit.

The internet has brought us the Cliff Notes to existence and we think we understand important events and concepts because they have been brought to our attention on the thirty-second buzz of hummingbird wings and mental floss videos.

To know something is easy: The North won the American Civil War. It's clean and full of crisp answers.

To understand something is a dirty business; it requires getting muddy and bleeding a little.

These days, we court an antiseptic omnipotence rather than a filthy touch of wisdom.

Who would have ever thought that the surest way to enforce ignorance was to eradicate the hardship of education? It turns out convenience is its own poison.

A love you come by easy will leave you just the same.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

A terrifying article, and shamefully accurate in my case.

The trouble with today is that everyone knows everything, but no one understands shit.

The internet has brought us the Cliff Notes to existence and we think we understand important events and concepts because they have been brought to our attention on the thirty-second buzz of hummingbird wings and mental floss videos.

To know something is easy: The North won the American Civil War. It's clean and full of crisp answers.

To understand something is a dirty business; it requires getting muddy and bleeding a little.

These days, we court an antiseptic omnipotence rather than a filthy touch of wisdom.

Who would have ever thought that the surest way to enforce ignorance was to eradicate the hardship of education? It turns out convenience is its own poison.

A love you come by easy will leave you just the same.

In college I argued, and got an A, the South won the war. On the last day of the war Lincoln was dead, every slave was still a slave, 390,000 Yankee boys were dead, etc.

 

[le_kitty]

A terrifying article, and shamefully accurate in my case.

The trouble with today is that everyone knows everything, but no one understands shit.

The internet has brought us the Cliff Notes to existence and we think we understand important events and concepts because they have been brought to our attention on the thirty-second buzz of hummingbird wings and mental floss videos.

To know something is easy: The North won the American Civil War. It's clean and full of crisp answers.

To understand something is a dirty business; it requires getting muddy and bleeding a little.

These days, we court an antiseptic omnipotence rather than a filthy touch of wisdom.

Who would have ever thought that the surest way to enforce ignorance was to eradicate the hardship of education? It turns out convenience is its own poison.

A love you come by easy will leave you just the same.

AMB, I like how you've put it.

I agree. Understanding something runs deeper than being told what it is about, or even reading about it. It requires us to turn it over, unpack it, look at it, study it in another light, attempt to apply it, fail, and then take another look. Ad infinitum. And then perhaps, we might know what we're looking at, the words might penetrate us instead of sliding off. That's where understanding lives.

As for the article... When I first began watching films, it gradually replaced my desire to read books, which up until then, was almost my sole source of entertainment. There was a restlessness in me that hadn't been there before I was introduced to the quick action paced screen. I grew up with traditional parents, that's all I can say.

I find the rewiring interesting and machines changing the way we think/work. I know that the brain can rewire itself and we can do it consciously. But having our work subtly change as a result of the medium we work with seems quite fascinating. I love a good pen though.

I don't read as much as I used to but I read further afield and probably consume more non-fiction than fiction. It doesn't bother me because we don't have to read everything. There's so much out there (notwithstanding the fact that our time is limited). We know very quickly what we want to read, what holds our interest and what does not. I concede that my attention span is probably not as long as it might be if the net and our culture of immediacy didn't exist.

Yet without the net, I wouldn't have read any of the books I've read in the last year, a couple of which I had brought and realised whilst on ch. 1 that I had made a mistake. Though perhaps there is something to be said for the style I was trying to immerse myself in. I also wouldn't have known half the authors existed or been able to get my hands on a copy (without moving from where I sit right now. I know that opens up a whole new field where laziness is concerned, but that's why modern societies have gyms.) So... I don't have a problem with sitting long stretches of time to read. It's more about what I read. I'm a discerning reader and I would chalk that down to ubiquity. Blaming external influences for not being able to read something bugs me a little. Get rid of it then, don't read it, or don't complain. Not all three!

Somewhat unrelated... creatively, there's something to be said for embracing limitations. Technologically... there's no point fighting something if it's going to happen, so we might as well seek it for what it can do for us and dive into it. I am a bit of a hypocrite though, the idea of artificial intelligence taking over humanity is not something that agrees with me. But we fear what we do not understand, or at the very least, baulk. So there's that.

Now I've read over your post again and realised you were talking about research!

Where research is concerned, Google and wiki are my best friends. (Yes, never ever reference wiki in an academic essay, I know) But I often end up wiki-walking. Though I did recently about a month ago buy a book online to read more about the world I was placing my next story in.

 

[GoldenCojones]

...
The North won the American Civil War. It's clean and full of crisp answers.
...

The war ain't over yet! We're just taking a long halftime

 

[SamScribble]

'The trouble with today is that everyone knows everything, but no one understands shit.'

Ain't that the truth, Beast. Well said.

 

[Sammael Bard]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/

So, assuming you can actually sit still through the whole thing, what's your thought almost a decade after it was written?

There's always a choice with how you gather information. If something really piqued your interest, you always have the choice to go down and dirty on it. You just need to focus on what you need and separate those useless garbage from the useful ones. Google, or any medium of mass information, isn't being "forced" upon us. There's always a switch off button to it.

I don't think we need to know each and every detail of everything that happens in our world. Even the human brain doesn't work like that. It just sifts through the information, keeps what it needs and discards the rest. If the information isn't used for a long (i.e. committed to long term memory), you'll only remember highlights of that particular info. Everything else is in the dustbin.

If anything else, Google and sources of mass information like the internet has made life easier for me. I can find easy-to-understand diagrams and 3D models of human anatomy in 3 seconds. Want to see an in-depth explanation of Krebs cycle and it's uses? It's right there, just a click away. As a student, it has made life a helluva easy for me by saving me a lot of time and a few dozen trips to the library.

 

[sr71plt]

Google is just a repository and delivery system. To do serious/reliable research on a topic, you need to pay attention to the source of the information. Wiki is fine for framing a topic, but you need to pay attention to the URL source and look for sources that would be the most authoritative. If you want to know Bernie Sanders' political platform on anything, for instance, you don't go to Fox News for the source, you go to Sanders' campaign Web site.

I made a later career of this. My office provided authoritative media coverage in international affairs and analysis of that. Thus, to find out what the Egyptian president said in a speech, we didn't bother to rely on what AP or NBC news reported on the speech--we monitored the speech live from official Egyptian media ourselves and had it translated by a monitor proficient in both the president's dialect of Arabic and in English. And to determine if he said anything new or different on a topic from what his previous positions were, we had his previous speeches translated verbatim to compare the content of the new speech with.

That said, for my writing, Google and the Internet are a godsend and I can find "good enough" data fast enough to be useful. Before, with just books on my shelf and in the library to consult the difference between that and having access to the Internet in time and effort saved is parallel to the difference between writing with a manual typewriter and with a computer.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Near the end of a long life I conclude most people build worlds with their biases and taste and experiences. And they conform to the stereotypes they all hate. But winners don't. Winners march to the beat of unseen drummers, and we can learn what winners do. Its called the Emprint Method. If you want Einstein make the child do what he did. If you want a ghetto thug or baby mama, turn them loose in the hood to mimic the others. Winners find other paths.

Google is simply another hood for shaping people.