"With Google I'm starting to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. People in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless"
Doug Coupland
I have a confession to make. Even though I learned to write in high school, my absolute, most unfavorite thing to do was research papers. Those about my age know of what I speak. I would dread when the teacher would lay out the year's activities and say something like "And in March we will be doing our research paper. Start thinking about your topic now and on April 1st, the paper with all the prep documents will be due." Yuck!
For those who have never been through this, or for those who have and since repressed those memories, I will spell out the process. First, the painful event of picking a topic. It has to be something that was both interesting to you as well as the reader. Once the topic was picked, it was off to the library to search for research materials. First up - plowing through the card catalog using the dreaded Dewey Decimal System. This classification system, which was invented by Melvil Dewey in 1876, was used by all libraries for search purposes. I really think it was invented just to punish students.
Once you found research books, you then were to take notes on 3" x 5" note cards. Each note card had to contain the content, author, publisher, and year published. It was a dreadful process. Once you have been through the chore of creating a bunch of note cards, you were then ready use them in the preparation of a rough draft. In writing the rough draft, the content was to take shape and the flow of the paper was to be established. All the while, content which was not original, was to be identified and footnoted so your paper would not get "booted" for plagiarism. Finally, the rough draft was ready to be turned into the final paper. It needed to be typed (double spaced), with a cover page, table of contents and a bibliography. Most of us had typing skills consisting of one finger pecking. Lots of white out, lots of erasures. Once if was finally done, it was turned in and you waited for the bad news when it was returned from the teacher.
Then came the internet. The internet grew, it offered a cornucopia of information by using simple commands known as Boolean search. This was not new stuff . "Boolean Logic" was invented by mathematician George Boole in the 19th century. The purpose of the logic was to combine and exclude certain topics from data bases. It was a bit clumsy, but compared to what was used before the internet, it was amazing.
Enter the search engines. There were a bunch of them in the beginning. Out of the pack, emerged one leader - Yahoo! An odd name, but it was heads and shoulders above the rest. Many market experts thought Yahoo! would be very tough to knock off that perch. That is until another young company with an odd name entered the arena. Welcome to the age of Google.
The new search engines, led by Google, are so advanced they did not need to use Boolean searches. You type a word in the search box and presto - you can get thousands of related topics right at your finger tips. As I have aged, I realize more and more how much fun learning is. With search engines like Google, learning is fun and quick. Kids today who have grown up in the age of the internet, have no idea how lucky they are. The test scores for kids today should be off the charts with the tools they have at their disposal.
And there it is. Life before Google. From a literary standpoint, days before Google was like walking to school 10 miles, uphill, both ways. The internet has taken us from the stone age to the rocket age and beyond. The histories and mysteries of the world are there for our pleasure just by using a click of a mouse. Today, to not use this wonderful tool, to not be informed, is just not smart.
Once you found research books, you then were to take notes on 3" x 5" note cards. Each note card had to contain the content, author, publisher, and year published. It was a dreadful process. Once you have been through the chore of creating a bunch of note cards, you were then ready use them in the preparation of a rough draft. In writing the rough draft, the content was to take shape and the flow of the paper was to be established. All the while, content which was not original, was to be identified and footnoted so your paper would not get "booted" for plagiarism. Finally, the rough draft was ready to be turned into the final paper. It needed to be typed (double spaced), with a cover page, table of contents and a bibliography. Most of us had typing skills consisting of one finger pecking. Lots of white out, lots of erasures. Once if was finally done, it was turned in and you waited for the bad news when it was returned from the teacher.
Then came the internet. The internet grew, it offered a cornucopia of information by using simple commands known as Boolean search. This was not new stuff . "Boolean Logic" was invented by mathematician George Boole in the 19th century. The purpose of the logic was to combine and exclude certain topics from data bases. It was a bit clumsy, but compared to what was used before the internet, it was amazing.
Enter the search engines. There were a bunch of them in the beginning. Out of the pack, emerged one leader - Yahoo! An odd name, but it was heads and shoulders above the rest. Many market experts thought Yahoo! would be very tough to knock off that perch. That is until another young company with an odd name entered the arena. Welcome to the age of Google.
The new search engines, led by Google, are so advanced they did not need to use Boolean searches. You type a word in the search box and presto - you can get thousands of related topics right at your finger tips. As I have aged, I realize more and more how much fun learning is. With search engines like Google, learning is fun and quick. Kids today who have grown up in the age of the internet, have no idea how lucky they are. The test scores for kids today should be off the charts with the tools they have at their disposal.
And there it is. Life before Google. From a literary standpoint, days before Google was like walking to school 10 miles, uphill, both ways. The internet has taken us from the stone age to the rocket age and beyond. The histories and mysteries of the world are there for our pleasure just by using a click of a mouse. Today, to not use this wonderful tool, to not be informed, is just not smart.
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