Today is Google's birthday. What a wonderful thing it is. I personally treat the home page of Google as my key to the treasure...looking at those two O's gives me a feeling of huge anticipation about what would emerge out of this treasure box !
It has indexed information on internet....LOTs of it
It has put an end to the exclusivity in knowledge..one thinks about something ...types it and gets to know almost everything about it. Sort of information democracy.
There is a subhashit (noble idiom) in Marathi - "Anant haste kamlawarane...Deta kiti gheshil do karane". It means - When someone is distributing with innumerable hands / ways how much shall someone be able to gather with his / her only two hands. It fits what Google is doing like a hand in glove. It has so much to offer, so much to be searched and discovered...its only the mind and endurance of the surfer that is the limiting factor. No wonder "Googling" has become an official verb in English language !
Ofcourse like any technological marvel...it has its own pros and cons.
The pros are very obvious ones...huge amount of information is at finger tips...so more time can be devoted to analysing rather than searching for information. No need to reinvent the wheel...it indicates the boundary of human information pool...pushes us to know more than what is already known....uncover what is hidden till date.
Now the cons...the human thought process has following steps -
Get information about the event, object or person.
Analyse it.
Draw suitable conclusions.
And finally act upon it.
The first step has been simplified by Google. Also to some extent it acts as an enabler for the second step. But the third and fourth step must be based entirely on the human intellect. But Googling provides also throws up the readymade analysis, perspectives as well as the conclusions for an event. These readymade conclusions, analysis might be limiting the human ability to think for himself. It increases the chances for the uninitiated to ADOPT conclusions rather than think through and ARRIVE at conclusion.
It might be also limiting the inquisitiveness of gathering knowledge from sources other than the internet. Like say if a student has a school assignment to gather as much information about butterfly ...he or she either would wander in bushes, gardens and record his observations of the butterfly OR just type "Butterfly" in Google window and download the nicest stuff. No doubt the downloaded stuff would be much more comprehensive and presentable..but still its not an outcome of natural human curiosity and intellect.
While I admit that life has indeed become fast and not many would have time for observing butterflies....the chances of things getting adopted mindlessly without verification have increased many fold. Children from young age are exposed to this Ctrl C Ctrl V culture limiting their abilities to question and toil for gathering knowledge.
This we can call the down side of too much information available too easily.
As a oft quoted cliche..technology can be used for good or bad purposes...its like genie that gives us tools...those tools which are helpful in solving day to day riddles. Google is one such tool.... needs to be used wisely.
Happy Birthday Google !
It has indexed information on internet....LOTs of it
It has put an end to the exclusivity in knowledge..one thinks about something ...types it and gets to know almost everything about it. Sort of information democracy.
There is a subhashit (noble idiom) in Marathi - "Anant haste kamlawarane...Deta kiti gheshil do karane". It means - When someone is distributing with innumerable hands / ways how much shall someone be able to gather with his / her only two hands. It fits what Google is doing like a hand in glove. It has so much to offer, so much to be searched and discovered...its only the mind and endurance of the surfer that is the limiting factor. No wonder "Googling" has become an official verb in English language !
Ofcourse like any technological marvel...it has its own pros and cons.
The pros are very obvious ones...huge amount of information is at finger tips...so more time can be devoted to analysing rather than searching for information. No need to reinvent the wheel...it indicates the boundary of human information pool...pushes us to know more than what is already known....uncover what is hidden till date.
Now the cons...the human thought process has following steps -
Get information about the event, object or person.
Analyse it.
Draw suitable conclusions.
And finally act upon it.
The first step has been simplified by Google. Also to some extent it acts as an enabler for the second step. But the third and fourth step must be based entirely on the human intellect. But Googling provides also throws up the readymade analysis, perspectives as well as the conclusions for an event. These readymade conclusions, analysis might be limiting the human ability to think for himself. It increases the chances for the uninitiated to ADOPT conclusions rather than think through and ARRIVE at conclusion.
It might be also limiting the inquisitiveness of gathering knowledge from sources other than the internet. Like say if a student has a school assignment to gather as much information about butterfly ...he or she either would wander in bushes, gardens and record his observations of the butterfly OR just type "Butterfly" in Google window and download the nicest stuff. No doubt the downloaded stuff would be much more comprehensive and presentable..but still its not an outcome of natural human curiosity and intellect.
While I admit that life has indeed become fast and not many would have time for observing butterflies....the chances of things getting adopted mindlessly without verification have increased many fold. Children from young age are exposed to this Ctrl C Ctrl V culture limiting their abilities to question and toil for gathering knowledge.
This we can call the down side of too much information available too easily.
As a oft quoted cliche..technology can be used for good or bad purposes...its like genie that gives us tools...those tools which are helpful in solving day to day riddles. Google is one such tool.... needs to be used wisely.
Happy Birthday Google !
No comments:
Post a Comment