New Comm Ave

Mohammad Khalil is a freshman student at Fullerton College. After four years of hard work in a cutthroat competitive high school, he is glad to be at a junior college. His parents and family mean everything to him as he is still the baby of the house even at 18, still bossed around by his older brother, and still picked on for his short height. Though his resume looks very business-based, his major is Computer Engineering. His parents are quite confident that he’ll eventually become a doctor, even though he’s always wanted to go into politics because as his role-model Imran Khan says, “true change can only come through political means.” But perhaps, what’s most unfortunate about Mohammad is he has trouble identifying his proper name. So when you do ask him for his name, don’t mind the long pause or the complicated answer for such a simple question. Stuck between choosing a best fit career and defining his identity, Chaudary Mohammad U. Khalil Jr. is truly one confused man.

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Sergey Brin, the one of the two masterminds behind one of the most powerful companies in the world today, Google, once said in an interview, “ ‘Certainly if you had the world’s information attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off’ ” (Carr). Possessing the world’s information does sound good, but it must come at a cost, right? “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” I recall on the first day of class, my Macroeconomics teacher very confidently said. Perhaps contrary to the general consensus, we are closer to the ‘artificial brain’ that Sergey Brin dreams of than most people think. After all, a simple Google search provides information that previously could have taken hours or even days to find. With more one computer for every two Americans, the United States ranks #2 in the number of computers per person (“Computer Use in Homes and Work”). Never mind the hassle of finding a computer with Internet access, nowadays, 13-year-old carry around a “smartphone” containing full web access. I carry one around myself too, and have found it to be quite useful, in fact. When my Chemistry instructor assigns us a worksheet of drawing the Lewis structures of a few bizarre chemical compounds, I simply reach into my pocket, grab my “Google phone” and search “Lewis Structures.” Before my lab partner finds the correct page number on Lewis Structures in the index of the textbook, I am already drawing the diagram. Not only am I out of the class earlier than him, but I also don’t suffer from a hurting back from the hassle of carrying around a hefty 5 pound textbook. But who gained the most from this assignment? Writer Nicholas Carr, a notable critic of the Internet age, puts it more bluntly: is Google making us stupid?

Nicholas Carr is skeptical of the effect of the Internet on our brain. He views the Internet phenomena as a danger to our brain’s abilities, including reading and thinking. In the example of me and my lab partner, we were both able to finish the worksheet correctly and on time. I went through less pain and was far more efficient. Surprisingly, a study conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles showed that Internet surfing stimulated many more parts of the brain than did pure reading. In this particular study, one group of middle aged adults was given the task of an internet search, while the other was assigned to read a book-formatted webpage (“Internet Surfing Better than…”). The results indicated that the group assigned to an Internet search had parts of the brain stimulated that were not stimulated in the other group, including the decision-making and complex reasoning portions. However, the answer to Nicholas Carr’s question cannot be entirely dependent on a scientific study. The study provided evidence on just one type of Internet usage.

The human brain is one of the most complex structures in the known universe. Its potential is undefined, and unlimited. However, it is powerful only when exercised. Nicholas Carr points out an important feature of the brain of developing. Before the rapid advancement of technology, we thought that the brain developed only until adulthood, and then suddenly stopped just like the rest of our body. However, this is not the case. He emphasizes that the brain continues to develop and redevelop constantly, regardless of the age. Of course, our mental abilities decay as we age but nonetheless, our brain cells may continue to form new connections and develop. However, the reverse is also true. If the brain is not exercised on a regular basis, it loses potentially great growth. Essentially, it is sensitive to change and even a small impact could have significant effects.

With the addition of the Internet, the critical thinking sector of our brain has taken the biggest blow. Though browsing the Internet may be more beneficial than reading in some physical ways, it can be harmful in others. With such massive information readily available, there’s no need to think as deeply. From my personal experience, people choose to do things they absolutely have to and pass on those that may be optional. If a student was assigned to write an analytical term paper about the Civil War, access to thousands of ideas may be just a “click” away with a Google search. This, however, simply discourages the student to think for himself when he can simply let another person on a history forum on the Internet do the thinking for him. Shopping online for ideas may even help him earn a better grade as his own ideas may not have been as sophisticated. This eventual path towards plagiarism is a great danger that comes with the Information Age. Plagiarism has gained momentum in recent years (“Student Plagiarism ‘on the Rise’”). This growing trend is significant in that it provides evidence that students are sacrificing their own mental capabilities by letting someone else think for them, which amounts to a tragic death of critical thinking. Hence, Google can potentially make us stupid, if we use the service incorrectly. Critical reading has also been affected by the growing Internet phenomena. Carr describes how the Internet has changed his way of reading, “Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. […] The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” He further concludes in his article that deep reading is indistinguishable from deep thinking. The Internet has barely become popular for less than 20 years and already, Google has reshaped our “plastic” brain to its own convenience. How, exactly, has the Internet changed our way of reading?

When I searched “Lewis Structure of N2O” on Google, my eyes skimmed right to the first result, ignoring all the advertisements, statistics, and similar concepts that surrounded the result page. The only thing I was looking for was how the Lewis Structure looked. When the first result didn’t immediately give me a diagram of the structure, I simple pressed “back” and jumped to Google Image search feature, immediately giving up all hope on the textual results. As I scrolled down, I immediately spotted the diagram I was looking for and copied it onto my paper, never questioning its reliability. If it was on the Internet, it must have been true. The massive amount of information available has led to people automatically accepting the information as factual and reliable. Clearly, this is not the case. With the “Wikipedia” phenomenon becoming more and more popular, professional level experts have widely criticized the service for its unreliability. Crimes like “information vandalism” now plague the information giant. Wikipedia has quickly made its name into the dictionary like Google; the more general “just Google it” phrase is being replaced by “just Wiki it.” This may potentially be a bigger danger to our society. Mistaking false information to being true would only weaken the progress of this age of “information”.

On the other hand, the unreliability of information seems to have a positive side effect. A new type of intelligence seems to be emerging in the younger generations. The ability of discriminate between reliable and unreliable information is a valuable strength. With growing concern of authentic information, professors are heavily emphasizing the sources of information. Questioning the source paves the way for more brain activity involving decision-making and active reading. Perhaps this is one factor why UCLA’s study on middle aged adults showed a much higher stimulation of decision-making component of the brain when performing an Internet search than when reading. Physically, then, Google is making us smarter, though perhaps only in one way.

As statistics show, the Internet is much more popular among the younger generations for obvious reasons (“Computer Use in Homes and Work”). Today’s college students rely heavily on the Internet for their research and in some unfortunate cases, even ideas. More and more college students are turning to the Internet instead of the traditional print media. The role of libraries is changing rapidly. Though still widely present, libraries are no longer the one-stop for information. The Internet is available everywhere, so why bother the hassle of going to a library, never mind dealing with its open hours? In fact, Ross Dawson, a futurist, even claims that libraries will be extinct by 2019. His prediction clearly illustrates the growth of Internet. Dawson’s prediction is also very significant because libraries have for long, constituted an institution in our society and its extinction could be catastrophic. Nicholas Carr points out that in the age of information; print media has been forced to comply with the new “rules” of electronic media. I also agree with Dawson and Carr. The days of libraries are numbered. The New York Times has recently begun to fill its 2nd and 3rd pages with article abstracts to allow readers to quickly find the article of their interest.

Not only does Internet already have a large share of research, but it is also constantly expanding at a rate libraries never did. The true Internet generation has yet to enter college. According to the statistics, the most drastic changed have only yet to come with today’s adolescent generation. If researchers are turning to the Internet, instead of the library, for information just for convenience, perhaps it suggests that Google is not necessarily making us stupid, but lazy. It’s not that we are no longer researching, but that we have moved on to a different medium for information, simply because it is much more convenient. In fact, this new medium even encourages research as it supports to a much wider audience. Now, a student in Asia doesn’t need to depend on his underfunded library for information. With the Internet, he has the same information available as a valedictorian of Yale University has in America.

When I Google’d “Lewis Structure of N2O”, I was looking for nothing but the Lewis structure diagram. It didn’t matter to me why the Lewis Structure was unique for this compound as that wasn’t what the question asked of me. I did manage to find the correct answer in a very reasonable amount of time, and I quickly put the structure to memory in case it showed up on the test. I learned just as much as my partner in less than half the time, but I didn’t work nearly half as much as he did to get the answer, whereas he made the effort to look in a confusing, colorless book of more than 1200 pages. Clearly, my method was much more efficient, which leads to an even more reasonable question: Is Google making us lazy or efficient?

If a chemical engineer was assigned a task which required him to understand the Lewis structure, there’s no reason for him to not use Google to find the answer quickly and painlessly. If this saves him a few hours from rushing to a nearby library to review his Lewis structure procedures, he could utilize those hours and continue his research, and as a result, complete the research earlier than planned. Google, of course, is indeed being used by experts all around the world to expedite their work. However, if a college student was asked to draw the Lewis structure of dinitrogen monoxide, it’s not reasonable for him to Google the answer as that would only account to laziness. In the end, it depends on the user’s true motivation. Google can, therefore, both make you stupid or efficient, depending on how you use it.

Nevertheless, the positive effects of the Internet and Google cannot be undermined. Though our critical thinking sector has seen a steadily increasing inactivity time, the information cabinet is overfilled with useful facts and ideas. One may argue that the cabinet is not technically filled since we’ve made the habit of relying on the Internet to give this information whenever we need it but nevertheless, information is now available in large quantities. The internet has made revolutionary changes in communication as well. More importantly, this new medium of communication allows hassle-free transfer of information for scientific advancement. A research in the remote areas of Indonesia can be accessed and analyzed by another research team in Alaska. According to its founders, the entire concept of Google, aside from making money, has been to further scientific development. The chief executive of Google, Inc. claims his company’s focus is to “‘solve problems that have never been solved before’” (Carr).

However Google is only revolutionary for its time, just like the radio was revolutionary to the medium of news. As with any revolutionary development, things change for the better and worse. As Nicholas Carr points out, with the printing press, Friedrich Nietzsch’s writing changed from “arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style” (Carr). We have already witnessed the initial effects of Google, but its complete redefinition of our brain is still yet to be seen. So when Google’s Sergey Brin suggests getting a smarter brain, so that you’d be “better off,” there’s more to artificial intelligence than just information. Google has already handicapped people by replacing critical thinking and creativity sector of the brain, with mere information, and libraries with online encyclopedias like Wikipedia, and the most drastic of changes may have yet to come. On the other hand, it has expanded the opportunities of people all around the world, while also expediting scientific advancement. It can be a most powerful invention if used correctly and to a certain extent, but relying on the service and compromising your critical thinking may prove to be catastrophic. My Macroeconomics teacher was right after all; there is no such thing as a free lunch. The knowledge of the world may come at a cost of one of the most powerful functions of the brain, creativity. The next time you think about having your brain replaced with a supercomputer, think again.

• 2010 Spring
• Research