I couldn’t help but remember another drive, one of my favorite Breytspraak family moments, when I was chauffeuring my family on the Autobahn and my brother was very, very excited about our speed. While my brother surreptitiously videoed us, my overly educated family spent five minutes trying to figure out how to convert miles to kilometers to no avail (my defense is that I was driving too fast to concentrate on math). But what if we’d had Google at our fingertips (or mouth, via the iPhone voice app) then? We could have moved on to more interesting topics. Of course, we wouldn’t have had all the amusement in the years since watching it.
I’m of the strong opinion that Google can make us smarter, assuming we use it to its advantage. We don’t waste time debating or guessing facts that we can go dig up. Yes, there’s misinformation out on the Net, but less than you get while discussing something with a friend who can’t remember an exact detail. I think overall, it’s making us smarter.