Is google and wikipedia making us lazy?

[HarmOKnee]

A friend's daughter wanted to warm up some beans in the mircrowave, but the microwave was broken. She was beside herself! "OMG What am I going to do now?" she wailed. Her mum told her to use a saucepan instead. "whaaaat???" she said

[Forumosaurus]

Nonsense, just because it makes life easier it doesn't make us lazy.

 

Does it make you lazy that instead of building a fire from wood and flint you use an oven to cook your food?

 

Does it make you lazy that instead of taking your clothes down to the river to wash them you use your washing machine?

 

Does it make you lazy that instead of chasing a wild boar through the forest for food you go to the supermarket?

 

No.

 

I mean this is a really stupid question OP, honestly.

[Grandad.Malky]

I heard today that there is a train of thought which asserts that having instant access to websites like google and wikopedia is making us lazy, in that we don't have to bother remembering things, cos it's easier to look them up!

 

Any pearls of wisdom?

 

The real lazy ones that don’t even bother with google –

 

Is Meadowall open today?

[medusa]

Map reading is fine for travelling between cities/towns etc but pretty crap when you're trying to navigate round a city you're not familiar with in rush hour. So, pre-SATNAV we just got lost, drove round in cirlces and swore at incomprehensible one-way systems.

 

jb

 

You may have done, but I didn't.

 

I learned my way around using a map and then didn't need to refer to the map any more- and that applied to every town and city that was on my rep's patch, from Lincoln to Middlesbrough.

 

Granted I had a map of all of those places, but after the first couple of weeks of working there I didn't need the maps. I know people who have a sat nav and who don't even know their way around their home town because they've never made whatever picture they need to make their head to use to navigate.

[medusa]

I think before sat navs were invented,i actually got to my destination quicker.

 

My OH and I used to have little competitions as to who could work out a proper route to a destination faster- my head and map or his sat nav. The usual answer was that while he was still trying to get a proper read on where we were, I was already on the way there, with a route planned.

 

There's nothing wrong with going the wrong way, if that means that you learn that it's not a good way to get somewhere (with the possible exception of that junction on the M20 which takes you 20 miles further away from your destination before giving you the opportunity to get off the motorway and turn round).

 

You don't learn something by getting it right first time. You learn by getting it wrong, working out why you got it wrong and then learning to recognise the signs of getting it right or wrong. If you're paying attention to whether the irritating voice says that you need to go straight on or turn right are you learning also that you need to turn just after the traffic lights or that if you go past the house that's painted yellow you've gone too far?

[Suffragette1]

There is only a certain amount of information that your average person can retain and I find that the internet, as a resource, has greatly enhanced my knowledge. So, I find the reverse is true really. If I had to schlep to the library or lay my hands on some reference book to find out some kind of fact, I wouldn't bother with most of the things that suddenly pique my interest, or that I have to look up in reponse to a post on here, for example.

[janie48]

 

Any pearls of wisdom?

 

Keep coming on to SF. That can be an education!

[Phanerothyme]

Is google and wikipedia making us lazy?

 

I don't know, is they making us lazy bruv?

[HeadingNorth]

All the internet has done is to change what's important. It's no longer helpful (in most cases) to be able to retain a vast wealth of information - the important skill is being able to trawl through a vast wealth of information to find the bits of it that you need right now.

[Guest]

If anything forums like this seem to attract lazy people. People would rather post on a forum and ask someone to use a search engine for them than just go and do it themselves.

 

The thing is they'd get a better and quicker answer doing it themselves most of the time.