Google: Destroyer of Wonder

Recently I chided myself for thinking, I wonder how to ... That isn't a solution-oriented thought, I told myself. I must train myself to think, I must remember to Google this question.

My train of thought quickly derailed down a likely-naive path in which I worried for future generations who would not know wonder because they had always grown up with a google-powered internet at their fingertips. Certainly many of my considerations were nothing more than the ramblings of an old fogey (old by technology's standards). However, I plumbed the depths of this thought experiment because a feeling persisted, a feeling that a non-trivial consideration existed down this path.

Will future (or current!) generations of children understand the difference between "unknown" and "unable to find the keywords to describe"? I trust that future adults will eventually understand this distinction, but will children?

Perhaps the answer lies in how children conceptualize the internet (though I wonder how lay-people conceptualize the internet too!). Do they view the internet as a vast, but finite ocean, in which much information, but not all information exists? Or do they view it as an infinite realm where everything exists and the problem is only in the seeking?

I'm probably being too fanciful. Most children (and lay people) probably don't conceptualize the internet at all. After all, I've never seen the internet. All I know is that the internet is the thing that is probably broken if I can't get web pages to show up on my monitor.

I had to explain once (to an adult) how electricity comes from burning coal in power plants far away. Where did they think it came from? The walls, I suppose, but I digress.

I'm sure the answer to these questions has been studied by some psychologist out there with a neatly designed experiment and sound control group, but has it? The fact that I thought this, and I have heard other people refer to knowledge in the nebulous "out there" as well, suggests that the idea of the internet as finite is already crumbling. (Or maybe that is a faulty conclusion to draw from a social science question.)

The practical heart of the matter, I suppose, is this: Is the search for applicable, but accurate keywords similar enough to natural methods of inquiry that this cultural change (viewing the internet as a boundless information pool) will not retard future scientists or should I be worried?

I wonder... oops, I mean, I should Google this question...

Here is a blog post arguing that the internet does not make us dumb. The writer brings up many excellent points, but his word choice and sentence structure are a bit off-kilter. Either these are meant as an ironic post-modern contradiction of the blog's argument, or English is not the author's first language, or I'm being nit-picky.

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