“We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.” – John Naisbitt

René Descartes said “I think therefore I am.”  Could it be that when I do not think, I am not?  Living in the so called “information age” we are privy to information like never before.  Is information alone enough?  When we consistently “Just Google It” are we learning more or leaning on AI to do all the work for us. 

How much thinking goes into my reflex to “Just Google It”?  Has our search for information superseded our desire to acquire knowledge?  Has the effort to become knowledgeable become too much work?  After all, knowledge is about turning information into a context.  A context requires reasoning and cognitive congruity.  The major reason for this reasoning process is that factual information eventually changes or alters according to the context of culture, time, and psychosocial circumstances.      

“Information is not knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

“Just Google It”

Have you ever been in an interesting conversation and hit a snag concerning a fact?  This seems to be when you hear, almost automatically these days, “Just Google It”.  How does this feel?  To me, it feels like human opinion or reflection becomes secondary to factual information.  I want to know how another human sees what we are discussing, not what AI has determined to be significant.  I also feel that AI is usually very generic and lacking the human context.  It’s like that ancient television series Dragnet when Jack Webb says: “just the facts lady”.  The detectives in that series did not want any part of the context, however, these same detectives would then take the next human step and develop a context.  What happens when we lose the context of information? 

I believe that without the context of information we lose the ability to increase the knowledge pool.  Facts become meaningless without the ability to put them into context.  I know that five dollars is money, but what will five dollars buy?  I know that a tree falls in the forest and makes noise, but unless a human hears the noise of the falling tree it is unknown in that moment.  We write notes on a page, but what do those notes actually represent to the writer?

“Beware of the person who can't be bothered by details.” – William Feather

“I Can’t Be Bothered”

What does this statement mean?  Does it mean something is too hard to tackle?  Does it mean I am tired and incapable of doing whatever in that moment?  Or, does it mean I am feeling inadequate or lazy right now?

Whatever it means when someone says they can’t be bothered, they are done.  This matches up, to some extent, with “it is what it is”, which is like giving up on any alternative possibility.  The person is done.  They are not going to the next idea, action, or place.  They are finished with this particular decision by making the decision to quit.  They are quitters. 

When we become a quitter, we lose the opportunity to challenge ourselves.  We lose the potential to learn something new that could be lost forever.  When we face what we normally avoid there will be growth.  It is inevitable.  Phobic reactions are cured by exposure and desensitization by avoiding one’s avoidance.   

“The field of AI has traditionally been focused on computational intelligence, not on social or emotional intelligence. Yet being deficient in emotional intelligence (EQ) can be a great disadvantage in society.” – Rana El Kaliouby

Becoming AI

The advent of high-speed technology information has led to the idea that humans cannot keep up.  We have relinquished our human research limitations to AI.  AI is faster and more capable of replacing the human in multiple information gathering capacities.  AI has been placed in an ever-increasing position of power to replace human information gathering.  As Linda Stone ⁽¹⁾ has suggested, technology has become the prosthesis of the mind.  

A prosthesis is a device designed to replace a missing part of the body or to make a part of the body work better.  In that sense, AI, artificial intelligence, has become a prosthesis of the mind ⁽²⁾.

AI is purported to replace parts of the human mind that are not as highly functioning as technology. AI is faster and more comprehensive. Is that enough? Is replacing a mind as simple as replacing a body part?  Will AI eventually satisfy all the human capabilities to determine the context of the information that has been collected?

Will humans become more like AI?  Are we already well along that road to becoming information depositories deplete of contextual knowledge?  Witness the millions, if not billions, of people who already “Just Google it”.  How will this serve us in the future discovery processes of change?  Including, how to deal with the changes in information, which, by the way, used to be facts.

It seems that by taking the perspective of “I can’t be bothered”, we might continue to believe we can “just Google it” and that will be enough.  My concern is that it is an absurdity that it will ever be enough.    

References

1-Stone, L. (2008). Continuous Partial Attention-Not the Same as Multitasking, July 24, 2008, Business Week.

2-Wilson, B. (2024).  A Prosthesis for the Mind.  Psychology Today, November, 7, 2024.