Google: The fountain of knowledge? Or the downfall of society?

If you ever have a question, google has your answer! Advances in technology have provided us with a wealth of knowledge, but is this really what our society needs? Neil Postman describes how we gain from technology, but also make sacrifices from it's improvements. Google cofounder Sergey Brin puts it succinctly:

"I'd like to get to a state where people think that if you've Googled something, you've researched it, and otherwise you haven't and that's it."

Google is not research! This is where we are making our trade-off for technology. We have the answers to everything, yet we don't know anything. How many times have we 'googled' something, looked at the first result and then stated that as fact? Not all sources are accurate and not all sources are unbiased. Other times we find correct information, but we learn only the 'what', instead of the 'why'. Our society is becoming increasingly lazy and our knowledge of the facts is also lazy. Technology allows us to sound smart, when really we are far from it.

"With great power comes great responsibility"

We have the power to know everything, but we must have the responsibility to use this power correctly. Otherwise, we will become a society of lazy and surprisingly uneducated people, oh wait...

The world according to Google.
Neil Postman: Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change