The Impatience of the Google Generation

profBill writes "As a fifty-something professor who teaches introductory computer science, I am very aware that the twenty-somethings in my class are much more at ease with computers than any other generation. However, does that mean they are more adept at using those computers? Apparently not, according to the researchers at University College London. Their research indicates that while more adept at conducting searches, younger users also show 'impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs'. Moreover, these traits 'are now becoming the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors'. The panel makes two conclusions: That libraries (and I wonder what a library will become in the future, anyway) will have to adapt, and that the information processing skills of todays young people are lacking. Why are those skills lacking and, if they are, what can be done about it?"

Comments

Theyre kids of the new generation - deal with it.

[MindPrison]

Im an ex. teacher, now working in the industry instead, and I think I have an idea why they are like that - you know - incredibly impatient, demanding and everything has to be here and now! Its because they are used to it, with search engines like Google and others - not to mention modern computers with awesome search facilities gives them the power of instant knowledge, so who wants to wait given alternatives like that? We of the "older" generation are used to doing things by experience and heavy research into just about everything, and we have TRIED what they are doing now - therefor we know the difference between instant knowledge and well thought out and researched knowledge. There is a HUGE difference. But how do we change this? The truth is - we need to "tap into" that generation and show real life advantages, the young generation are far from stupid, they have aquire information differently because we have given them the oportunity to do so, and natural selection comes home.

Systematic literature review

[stranger_to_himself]

An good exercise is a systematic literature review. You have to make sure that you don't just find some information about the topic you are interested in, but you find all of the available information, then you must critically assess each piece of literature and synthesise them properly. Each stage of the process must be justified and repeatable (so no Googling)

I'm in the middle of one of these and its really shown up my impatience to get answers. In my opinion something like this should be a part of the school curriculum, or at least a part of undergradute courses.

Re:Systematic literature review

[ixache]

You can't collect, read, assess and synthesise "all available information" on Computer-Science, so you migth go more narrow and do Cryptography, but that's equally impossible. So you might go more narrow and do Diffie-Hellman. Even then you could only be certain you've found the most well-known articles and research on it, there's always going to be a risk that some student in India (say) has published a paper that includes information not found anywhere else. There's no way to tell.

I don't want to argue with you, but this excerpt made me think about the great Donald E. Knuth, whose story is well known: in the 60's, he devised the lofty project of writing a set of books about algorithms, that would be the definitive and comprehensive source of knwoledge about this topic. It is the famous and acclaimed The Art of Computer Programming.

All is fine, except that the level of detail and perfection that Dr. Knuth set himself to pursue led him to search for every piece of information about algorithms that could included in his books, and also to invent an idealized assembler (twice, MIX then MMIX) to get a feel "how it really works concretely", to program his own typesetting system, the great TeX (twice, first in Pascal then in C) --and to invent by the side his own programming methodology, literate programming (which has never caught on)-- and to revise accordingly his first three volumes once or twice each.

Now, forty years later, the wealth of knowledge about algorithms has grown exponentially, to the point that no one man could know all about it, and he is nowhere near the completion of his initial goal. Moreover, the workload he has currently assigned himself to complete unfortunately seems to require a longer time than his expected remaining lifetime (he was born in january 1938). And there are not many things more disheartening than seeing someone dying too early to achieve his lifetime Graal...

Sorry for being glum and offtopic,

Re:Apples & Oranges

[novakyu]

Kids these days simply give up thinking the result isn't there if the search query they entered wasn't giving the result they expected. Er, where do you get that idea? I'm not sure if I qualify as a "kid" (I'm old enough to drink legally), but when the search query does not return the desired result, the standard assumption is that the wrong keywords were specified---unless it was some kind of proper name, in which case it was either misspelled, or the result really doesn't exist, at least not in the index of the search engine being used.

But seriously, I see more older people typing in something for search result and then giving up when they don't get what they want: 1) They haven't internalized the power of Internet search engines as we have, 2) Most of them seem to have lousy keyword-picking skills.

Of course, I'm probably biased, since I haven't been around too many old people (especially not those who blazed the trail for computer science), but I still find your comment unsupported by evidence.

Re:Theyre kids of the new generation - deal with i

[TargetBoy]

The problem is that they have never seen an instance where they have needed to do what you describe. Just like most of folks have never needed to know how to skin and clean game any more.

Aside from my liberal arts classes in college, I never have used those skills in the 15 years I've been in the workplace.

The ability to find stuff very quickly on search engines is something that I need on a day-to-day basis and has had the president of my company come into my office with requests for me to find something for him.

Virtually any new business problem can be researched, overviewed, found in a highly rated book that describes the topic, one-click on Amazon with over night shipping, and read through the chapter that details how to do what you need to do.

The ability to determine the accuracy of that information, digest that research, mold it to the problem at hand, and write it effectively into proposals, designs, and code is what is useful in my job.

Unfortunately, colleges are just spitting out kids who have never really learned how to work together on a project, reuse code, or share information out of the fear that they will be called a plagiarist by some automated tool. At best their experience is limited to a "software engineering" class or internship.

The skill of being able to find things quickly is paramount in getting them up to speed in that area, because once you let them know they don't have to code EVERYTHING from scratch, they are more than happy to search code libraries for what they need.

I look forward to the day when we have coded better search engines that can search on some of the meta-properties of text rather than just the words or patterns.