Google is the white bread of the mind part 1
Comments(0) Last week I received an invitation to attend Tara Brabazons’ inaugural lecture Google is the Whitebread of the Mind, which I will be going to tomorrow evening.
Well, it seems everyone is cockahoot about it. Check out the article in The Times and another in The Telegraph.
I should disclose that I do know Tara professionally as she was kind enough to attend my transfer viva last year and subjected me to a right old grilling.
I was saddened by some of the comments in the “have your say” section that attacked academia in general, media studies as a subject, and finally the intellect of students and uni professionals alike. One of my project supervisors is a professor, and I know this is not something one becomes easily peasily in the UK, where as in The States the title is used for a qualified lecturer. Here you have to have a PhD, research and publish over a lengthly period of time and have some type of impressive effect on your discipline, your work is reviewed by your peers, before sitting in front of a panel to defend what might be your lifes’ toil. So when some numpty calls any professor an “idiot professor” I feel rather upset.
In defense of media studies I suggest reading this article as it puts it better than I.
Finally in the case of the comments about university students, Grrrrrr! I found some of my students to be so bright, and the discussions which arouse out of seminars so interesting and inspirational at times, that without teaching in the first 2 years of my PhD I very much doubt that I would have had the motivation or momentum which I experience now.
As I haven’t actually been to the lecture yet I reserve judgement on the real debate, but my hunch is there are several issues, which are being confused. One is all about SEO and the quality of information on the internet, then there is the whole critical engagement becoming extinct as skill thang, finally and possibly the most interesting is Google as a primary definer of knowledge and what that means ideologically.
Absolutely more to come on this.