Hurrah! Google just turned 17, just one year away from its legal drinking
age (maximum parts of the world). The sober teen Google has somehow got into
our heads and eroded the human capabilities of thinking, just wondering what
the adult Google would account to.
The advent of internet, with highly efficient search engines has shown an
easy path to the humans for finding answers to their questions. This is good from
one way that we get to save a lot time, and have access to more information
than what our ancestors had. On the other hand, there is an adverse effect of
limiting our exploratory skills.
One of the dangers of this habit happens to be 'falling for opinions', rather
than banking on facts. It is painful to see people sharing weird stuff on
social media that carry no logic. All that they see is the number of likes and
shares, to quantify the legitimacy and just hit the share button blindly. After
all, this is the new way of saying 'hi' to the followers.
A classic case of such an instance was when a lot of people shared the
picture of Morgan Freeman to mourn for Nelson Mandela's death. Similarly, the
RIP status for Rowan Atkinson (famously Mr. Bean) who is still alive and
healthy. Are we falling for opinions and manipulations? Rather making use of
our key strength called thinking?
And, do not forget that we all believed a set of photos of Shanghai to be
actually clicked in Gujarat, just because lot of people shared it and thinking
they possibly visited there. We are just getting lazy and reluctant to explore
more about things that we choose to believe in, leaving lot of opportunities
for the pranksters and fraudsters. Yes, even today I won a lottery from the UK and
a German lady wanted to donate all her wealth to me, as she got to know from
internet that I am a good guy. In a couple of weeks I am expecting 4 more such
lotteries and ladies who would make me as wealthy as Donald Trump! (Coming
soon: Vote for Srini).
The more we fall for pranks and false facts, we become more vulnerable and
exposed to the greed of corporations and politicians. Simple example of
e-commerce sites playing around with pieces of goods, to create a mirage of
huge discounts pretty much sums up this whole scenario. And, we are not far
away from the babas and the god men making use of search engines and social
media as channels of chatting with the gods.
Google is doing a brilliant job in helping us improve our lives. Let's not
just think of taking advantage of it, rather think of ‘thinking for ourselves’ too. The day we stop thinking is the day
when our soul starts creating a gap from our mind. Thought Process Outsourcing
is never the answer, still Thought Process Differentiation could be one of the
possible answers.
