A while back, the publishers of Encyclopedia Britannica announced that they were ceasing the production of their print editions. I grew up with a set of the big blue books in my home. So this brought back memories of sitting at the dining room table writing reports about the state of Oklahoma, the process of photo synthesis, and the native tribes of Burundi.
Times change and this announcement was no surprise. Of course, the publisher of this and other bastions of research find
themselves competing with the perception that all the information anyone needs can be found via Google, Safari, Bing, or Yahoo without having to pay for it. While this is patently untrue, perception is reality for many. The bigger problem is that this is kind of a shallow reality.
Broadly, there are two kinds of on-line searches: 1) Those by people seeking products or services. Providers spend big money trying to manipulate their way to the top of these searches for obvious reasons. 2) Searches for information, in particular term papers, medical data, news, and a variety of other needs and desires.
At first, all this technology may seem to be a boon to research. But surveys indicate that the vast majority of us never look past the first three pages of a search result, or about 30 entries. At any given time, any of us can manipulate what’s found in these first three pages. As much as the search engines continue to out-manipulate the manipulators by changing criteria and algorithms, companies spend dollar after dollar making sure their product or service shows up on the first page of a search.
This is exacerbated by the tiny screens on mobile devices. With more and more people using smart phones as their primary tool for information, fewer and fewer are willing to dig down past the first few snippets they find at the top.
While most understand that product and service searches will be rife with manipulation, many of these same people fail to spend the requisite energy to dig past the first few links to find information when the need is more critical. This is the reason why many student papers lack the depth of material that they did prior to advent of the internet. (“I looked it up on line and this is all there was.”) Was research harder back then? Yes. Did it require more thought? Yes. Did even the reluctant students learn more? I would argue yes. (This does not mean that I am pushing for a return to card catalogs.)
Then there is the news. Several recent surveys indicate that those under 30 gather their insights about current events, political issues and civic concerns primarily from updates on Facebook. (“If Crystal posted it, it must be important.”) With a critical election in November, not to mention all the national state and local referendums on the ballot, it scares me half to death that we are fostering a population that is unwilling to spend even minimal time really examining the issues.
Is there a solution to all this? Not really. It’s just that we all need to be aware that our emphasis on convenience and efficiency is costing us depth, reflection and ultimately the mature thinking that has made society what it is. After all, our nation was built on the basis of persuasive arguments. (Think the Declaration of Independence, The Wealth of Nations and The Federalist Papers.) Go ahead, start digging past the first few pages on Google the next time you’re looking for the right information. I dare you.