[Air-L] What's "Lost" in the Google age of Research?

[RBerkman at aol.com]

Good morning,

For an upcoming paper at an Institute of General Semantics conference, I 
would be grateful to hear from anyone on this list of your experiences, feelings, 
or opinions on what, if anything, you've "lost" in this age when we can find 
answers and information so quickly and easily by going to Google (or to a 
lesser degree Wikipedia.)

I am not focusing on the traditional issues or concerns like information 
quality, accuracy, comprehensiveness, etc., but more subtle matters, eg, if you 
have noticed a loss in areas like:

* No more unanswered "burning questions"/less mystery in life/less wonder
* Loss of what had traditionally been enjoyed/appreciated in a longer, slower 
research journey and process: eg fewer serendipitous discoveries? Less 
reflective reading with internal questions and analysis? More going on "Automatic" 
and less use of your own thinking and less mindfulness, etc?

(Feel free to let me know too if you found there really are no losses at all 
from the Google research age, and that it is really primarily all to the 
researcher's benefit)

Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences.

Robert Berkman
Associate Professor, Media Studies
The New School, New York NY
Editor, The Information Advisor
www.informationadvisor.com
Intelligent Agent Blog
www.ia-blog.com


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