Just ask Google: is it too easy?

Today, of course, a quick Google search would suffice. We can source anything immediately. Arguably, having so much instant information at our fingertips has made our jobs, especially as journalists, easier.

It certainly has if you are resigned to working alone at a screen. Yet those of us who remember how long it took to research anything at all may feel, as I do, that there is a benefit in gathering information slowly but very, very surely.

I still know a lot about the Spanish Civil War because I took time to read about it. Today, my memory simply disposes of most of the facts I grab from the internet seconds after I’ve used them.

I am no longer limited to writing on subjects that I really know about or have experience of because I can be an instant expert on anything at all.

Journalists used to be based on the ground at the heart of a situation. We used to mine deep for information. Now we just rummage through the nuggets at the surface, not bothering to return to the seam to glean richer spoils. And I think we are the poorer for it.

‘The data stream can’t be shut off’

The problem is that nowadays there is no excuse for being ill-informed, also known as behind the times. We all want to appear in the know, professionally and socially, about the latest development on any story (sport, gossip, cultural phenomenon, hard news from Syria – it doesn’t matter because it’s all being tweeted somewhere).

As Karl Taro Greenfield wrote in The New York Times recently: “The information is everywhere, a constant feed… The data stream can’t be shut off. It pours into our lives, a rising tide of words, facts, jokes, GIFs, gossip and commentary that threatens to drown us.

“Here we are, desperately paddling, making observations about pop culture memes, because to admit that we’ve fallen behind, that we don’t know what anyone is talking about, that we have nothing to say about each passing blip on the screen, is to be dead.”

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
September 2014 by Charlotte Metcalf	\|	Need-to-(appear to)-know

Не знайшли потрібну інформацію? Скористайтесь пошуком google:

Генерація сторінки за: 0.005 сек.