I am a techno-person. I love computers. I code as a hobby. I’m a far cry from being a Luddite.
But there are many ways that digital technology is making us less than we used to be. Many have been widely discussed. But not this one. Search is making us narrower, less well-rounded, and less wise.
“Search” encompasses lots of things, and some aspects of it are unobjectionable. The ability to find one document, file, or picture out of thousands by stringing together search terms is a fabulous time-saver and efficiency-enhancer.
But using Search to seek out specific facts or a specific piece of knowledge that is embedded in larger field of study or information where the relationship among the different facts or pieces is significant results is problematic. Yes, we find that fact or that piece of knowledge faster, but we gain no understanding of the bigger picture.
Here are three examples.
(1) Some may recall that back in the infancy of the Internet, Yahoo was supreme when it came to finding information. A few may even remember that Yahoo was an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle.” To find information through Yahoo, you had to dig down through layers of categories and subcategories. That took longer, but the arrangement of categories and subcategories told a great deal about the relationship of the source to other sources of knowledge. Not only did you get the specific information, you got an overview of where it fit in the larger knowledge/information world. And often the hierarchy would expose you to sources you might not of considered. Using Yahoo was a bit like what I did as a nerdy kid, picking a random volume of an encyclopedia and browsing through it, never knowing what you might find or learn.
(2) I started working as an attorney before the two big search databases (Lexis and Westlaw) were widely used. To conduct legal research, you had to use one of two sources, both of which were in multiple-volume book form. I would always start with an appropriate subject-matter treatise, to get a general overview of the area of law in which my problem resided. These were marvelous things — they laid out not just the applicable legal rules (in text summarizing statutes and caselaw), but through their hierarchical layout they allowed you to see the relationships between the legal rules, how one legal theory grew or evolved from another. A secondary, more user-input-intensive source were the case digests. These merely summarized the various holdings of specific cases, putting each holding in its appropriate spot in a hierarchically-organized framework. The advantage of using the digests was that the printed cases themselves made reference to the place in the digest where its holdings were summarized, so if you had in your hand a case discussing the legal requirements for granting temporary injunctive relief, you could go to the digest number where other cases discussing the same thing were summarized. But even without a textual analysis, the digests’ hierarchical framework itself gave you knowledge about the place this particular issue fell in the larger “law” world. It provided context that you don’t get through a simple case search.
(3) Google Maps and Waze and whatever Apple has are extraordinarily helpful applications. But when you put in a starting point and a destination and get back a step-by-step route to follow, you miss out on the bigger geographical picture. My sons can (and do) use Google Maps to get anywhere, but despite being born in the Bay Area and living here their entire lives, I doubt they have any idea of the relative location of Palo Alto vis-a-vis Oakland, or Santa Rosa vis-a-vis Fairfield, or Berkeley vis-a-vis Santa Cruz. Google Maps, which is effectively a kind of Search, doesn’t focus on the route’s relationship to other (non-route) locations. So by using it we miss out on the geographic literacy that comes from using old-fashioned maps. (Yes I know it’s possible to zoom out in Google Maps and see the larger picture, but not while driving.)
Search has its place. I love it and use it all the time. But it’s made us all narrower. Context, they say, is everything, and we get that a lot less than we did 30 years ago.
Categories: technology
Tags: Search