Is Google Making Us Dumb? Yes, No and Maybe

WGHP-TV reporter Bob Buckley recently visited my Citizen and Participatory News class for a technology story he was working on. His question for me and my classmates? “Is Google making us stupid?” Having studied Google extensively over the past year, especially in my Contemporary Media Issues class this spring, I had an answer — well, three answers — at the ready.

Yes

Google search, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube, Google Analytics, Google Maps. Google’s products are so ubiquitous and so easy to use, there’s so much available with one free username and password, that people maybe aren’t being as smart as they should be with their own data.

I said Google’s free, but it really isn’t. There are potential costs to sharing so much of your life with one company. I don’t think that’s something a lot of people think about.

No

Google is one of the most successful, most powerful companies in the world. Competitors and even companies in other industries — though, there are fewer and fewer industries into which Google’s tentacles don’t reach — are going to try to copy it.

Google’s more than 10 years old, yet, with its 20 percent time and we-can-do-anything idealism, it still behaves very much like a startup. Not to say there aren’t privacy, intellectual property and other concerns that come along with this, but if more companies shared Google’s ethos, the world would probably be smarter.

Maybe

Google search invites and rewards curiosity. Because it’s so easy to get answers, people ask more questions. Even if searchers accept the first result as the final word on their question, if it’s a question they otherwise wouldn’t have asked, they’ve arguably been made smarter.

Google should be a starting point, not an ending point, however. Terminating all of life’s questions at the first search result, or even the 10th, 50th or 100th, severely limits one’s potential for intellectual growth. Google puts one on the path to knowledge. The onus is on the user to see the journey through.

The Reputation of Shaming

Online shaming has its benefits.
It getting too bad a rap would harm all users.

Is the Internet destined to become a Tragedy of the Commons, where users’ compulsion to shame peers for objectionable behavior and the shamed’s defensive response — either shaming back or retreating from online discourse — destroys the Web’s sanctity as a vibrant public forum?

All stakeholders count on the Web to be an open, mostly civil place where users feel comfortable interacting. Even the shamers. Even the more disgraceful shamers are enforcing norms, even if politeness isn’t one of them. Like, from Daniel J. Solove’s “The Future of Reputation,” subway riders should clean up after their dog if it poops inside the train, diners should reward good service with a decent tip, lovers should be faithful to their significant others. If the shamers’ messages become too frequent, virulent or embellished, other users, whom they rely upon to enforce the norms they’re trying to protect, are going to start to tune out such communications, even actively avoid them. The Web will lose its power as a norms-enforcing vehicle.

One of my classmates made a similar point when discussing the perceived credibility of blogs, suggesting a decline in decorum sinks all ships.

“The more pure gossip we see popping up on the blogosphere, the less credible it becomes,” David Parsons wrote in a discussion board post. “This should come as a relief to anyone wanting to stay out of the Internet’s ‘public eye,’ as more gossip only discredits the value of blogs in general. … At some point, you have to trust in the user to make smart choices about what they are reading on the Web.”

Parsons’ argument could be broadened to describe the Web as a whole.

It’s one thing, then, to make smart choices when it comes to macro-communicators like blogs. They stay in one place and usually must establish a track record before gaining a readership. It’s another thing to make smart choices when it comes to micro-communicators like social network, message board, chat users and the like, some of whom we consider online “friends.”

Consider, for a second, your own circle of (real-world) friends. You gossip. Everyone does. Don’t worry, it can be healthy, Solove points out, by shaping individuals’ reputations without confrontation. When you gossip, you likely have some friends whose words you take more seriously than others. For some, it’s, “Well, she’ll say anything.” For others, it’s “Wow, she said that? It must be true.” You’re using their reputations to inform their judgments about other people’s reputations.

Because you’ve been able to personally observe the veracity of your friends’ comments over an extended amount of time, these shortcuts usually serve you well. Online, things are considerably murkier. Our relationships with online peers are more fleeting, people can hop from one Web community to another very quickly, and we often know little about them, assuming we know anything about them, including their identity. Often, even those we label online “friends” we know surprisingly little about. Moreover, identities can be easily falsified, either, as Solove mentions, by individuals themselves, or by others.

What can save the Internet’s, yes, constructive power as a norms-enforcing vehicle? Well, norms. In the near future, society will demand transparency. Those who don’t share their lives online will be looked down upon as outcasts, much like a hermit living in a cabin on the outskirts of town might be viewed today. Those who do participate but in an dishonest way will also be ostracized. Online peers may make Internet small talk with such users — much like people do with otherwise personable neighbors who clam up the second even basic biographical details are broached — but will shut them out from the real conversation.