Dangers of Our Google Addiction
It's already a cliché to dismiss it when we can't remember the third president of the United States or the name of the current President of the United Arab Emirates, since we can always just Google it. High school students in some Texas schools are being allowed to use the internet during tests for any information not related to the test material. The age of Google makes it easy to access information we don't have. As a result, the age of Google makes knowledge superfluous. The problem with this is that creative thinking has always been the result of knowledge; without a command of the information salient to a field, it is impossible to think creatively and make novel connections between pieces of that information. Google makes it seem like we do not need to learn, because Google has done it for us; the less obvious reasons to become knowledgeable fall by the wayside. Further, Google may develop an AI in the near future. That means two Google may become capable of doing the critical and creative thinking many people will no longer be capable of for them. We may be in danger of no longer thinking for ourselves. Were Google's AI search to develop, the problem would start small: high school students would Google their essay questions. But it isn't hard to imagine this snowballing.