How stupid(er) am I offline, when I don't have Google?

As a graduate student, back when libraries had card catalogs, I would automatically commit to memory the names of authors of publications, and the years of publications too.  As this started getting complicated in my head, I tried setting up a rudimentary database of my own: for a few hours, over a week or so, I meticulously input into an Excel a Lotus file not only the names and titles and years, but also my own quick takes on them, with the idea that they could then help me with recalling the ideas.  The project became a pain, as one can easily imagine, and I abandoned it.

Meanwhile, information technology improved by leaps and bounds.  As access to information increased, I noticed that I was committing to memory less information than what had otherwise been my practice.  Over the years, I have changed my approach to make it easier for me to absorb a lot more ideas, without getting trapped into the mechanics of retaining the minute details. I worry mostly about retaining the big picture.

Here is an example, a non-academic one at that.  In this post, I referred to a saying that spoke about the glory days of Naples and that one should go to Naples before dying.  For a few years, I retained that piece of paper where the Italian fellow-passenger had written down the text for me: "Vedi Napoli, e poi muori."  I was afraid that I might not remember the phrase if I were to lose the paper.

But, Google changed all that.  I no longer had to waste my time and resources keeping track of such things. Thus, when I was blogging that post, all I had to do was to search for that expression with the appropriate keywords, and ... presto!  As a matter of fact, I don't even know what became of that paper!

Google, that way, has immensely simplified my life and enriched the total recall abilities of mine.  Now, if I had not ever known about that phrase, and the importance of Naples, then I wouldn't even know that I could have searched for it.  So, yes, there is that requirement of knowledge a priori.  That is, I am smart enough to have known about such a phrase, but not smart(er) enough to have recalled that from my memory.

Google has made me smarter, and not stupid, by any means.  (Here, too, I am able to immediately link to this not because I remembered the author's name, but only because I remembered having read an essay along those lines in the Atlantic.  One simple search and .... presto!)  It also means that when offline, I will be unable to quote from memory that expression about Naples, for instance.  Or my favorite John Updike poem--even though it is a favorite, I have not memorized that all!  I am definitely "smarter" online than when I am not, and I agree with Michael Jones, whose official title at Google is chief technology advocate:

Effectively, people are about 20 IQ points smarter now because of Google Search and Maps. They don't give Google credit for it, which is fine; they think they're smarter, because they can rely on these tools.

20 IQ points or 45 IQ points, I don't care what the value is. But, yes, I am smarter thanks to Google.

However, this does not mean that anybody with access to Google can figure everything out.
I know how to use Google and make sense of what it provides me only because I am able to process and construct meaning out of the information that I have.

I talk about these in many different ways with students in my classes.  I try to get them to understand that factoids and information are not what we are after, at the end of it all.  Instead, it is the ability to make sense out of the information.  Learning is a complex process, no doubt, but I want them to keep in mind that the goal is not to memorize facts and definitions.  Sometimes, I have even assigned this short interview with George Dyson, where he has this to say about Google:

Finding answers is easy. The hard part is creating the map that matches specific answers to the right question. That’s what Google did: They used the power of computing – which is cheap and really does not have any limits – to crawl the entire internet and collected and index all the answers. And then,by letting human beings spend their precious time asking the right questions, they created a map between the two. That is a clever way of approaching a problem that would otherwise be incomprehensibly difficult.

Finding that expression about Naples was easy only because I knew what I was searching for.  Yep, finding answers is incredibly easy anymore.

There is one more from Dyson notes that I love even more:

We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning?

So cheap is information that I no longer bother to keep in mind authors' names and the titles of their publications--I am supremely confident that I can always track them down in no time.

Which ultimately means I ought to issue a statutory warning to readers of this blog:

Dear blog readers: when you meet me offline, be prepared for a remarkably dumbed-down version of this blogger and engage me only in small talk, and not on any serious and substantive topic ;)