Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts

It's in my Other Brain

Psychologist Betsy Sparrow’s research reveals that we forget things we are confident we can find on the Internet. We are more likely to remember things we think are not available online. And we are better able to remember where to find something on the Internet than we are at remembering the information itself. This is believed to be the first research of its kind into the impact of search engines on human memory organization.

Sparrow’s paper in Science is titled, “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.” With colleagues Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard University, Sparrow explains that the Internet has become a primary form of what psychologists call transactive memory—recollections that are external to us but that we know when and how to access.

“Since the advent of search engines, we are reorganizing the way we remember things,” said Sparrow. “Our brains rely on the Internet for memory in much the same way they rely on the memory of a friend, family member or co-worker. We remember less through knowing information itself than by knowing where the information can be found.” Read More ... 

Can't find a site to write your Term Paper?

It is very likely that you can't, not after Google was ordered to remove over 500 web sites from their index, because of plagiarism claims, an action based on the DMCA. You can find a copy of the court order on Chilling Effects.

Just about all of the web sites are owned by a small group of individuals, which propagated the same information, using a spamming type of SEO stratagey, so I can't say that I feel sorry for the groups in question. Apparently, a large body of the term papers where written by students, who did not realize that their work was going to be sold on the Internet by these groups.

Where the Wild Things Are...

Chess is a Wild game I've only been playing for a short time, but I've gained enough understanding to realize that the angles of ...