Yep. I said it. I blame google. For what? You might ask? For taking away opportunities to communicate with other humans. For making information too easy to access. For taking away the jobs of door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen (and women).
Sounds like I have an axe to grind…but really, I’m not mad, just shocked that it has taken us so long to realize, that once again, we have been victimized by the advances of technology.
Let me explain. Recently, one of our teenage children walked into our room late one evening, and asked my wife and I a question. Exactly what the question was is not significant. The real story here is that there was an attempt at verbal interaction (gasp), our own flesh and blood approached US with a question. So, as our child walked out of the room, we looked at each other in shock and disbelief, that they had asked US a question, and didn’t go to google!
Let’s take a trip down memory lane. When I was growing up in the 80s, if I had a question, I would go to my wise parents for important counsel and advice on subjects like: animal species, sports trivia, general pointless facts about anything. And…if they didn’t know it, their response was this: go look it up!
That meant, go to the book shelf, and get the encyclopedia collection brushed off, and start digging in to research the great mysteries of the universe. What started with an actual conversation with another human being, ended with a discovery in an encyclopedia, that may or may not have been a decade old already. Surprisingly, through reading and research, I could eventually get answers to the questions I had. Only problem was, sometimes, it would take more than .2715 seconds to retrieve the results, and in some rare cases, I couldn’t even find what it was that I was looking for! And we all know what that meant! Right? A trip to the library…ahh…the dewey decimal system. Those long drawers full of index cards. For those born in the last two decades, let’s be honest, you have no idea what I’m writing about here.
So, here’s the point. While we have the answer to arguably everything at our finger tips, and can have it available to us in under a second, let’s ask what price we have paid for those conveniences.
Here are just a few suggestions:
- Lack of communication between parents and children
- Minimal interaction with other humans
- Misinformation (not everything that’s on the internet is TRUE!)
- Inability to “research”
- Access to material and content that are clearly inappropriate
- Major breaches in security
- Identity theft
- Theft of family time
- Hiding behind our screens and having alter egos
Perhaps you have some other ideas that you would like to share! I would love to hear from you. Please comment below, tweet back, or even leave a comment on Facebook. Who knows how we might be able to help others through this powerful forum via the internet…or, just ask google.
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