I want to introduce you all to this concept I’ve thought about for a long time called “The Google Divide”. Google says Google was founded on September 4th, 1998. While the shift wasn’t immediate, this date marks the beginning of a new wave in research and information sharing.
I started Quebec High School (our education system is different) in September 2000. I remember as early as grade 5 being introduced to the concept of Googling and search engines. That was the year my elementary school got Windows 98, leaving the floppy disc world behind. By high school we were being taught how to use search engines.
Yes I have loaded programs off a floppy disc. Then I learned what Google was the next year and basically computers changed.
A brief pivot to talk about project management styles
Over my years managing projects I learned about the “Waterfall” and “Agile” methods. The TL:DR version is with the “Waterfall” method where you plan your whole project into phases. Then each phase is executed in order as relevant milestones (corporate for checkpoints) have been reached. It apparently creates a “flow” like a waterfall for each stage of development. You can picture a staircase going down as each phase is added and completed. Click on this article, they explain it.
The “Agile” method is less rigid. You still need to plan out the phases of your project. You still need milestones and goals. What really changes is how you decide when to work on each phase. “Waterfall” is more or less set in stone once the project goes. With Agile, each week you will meet as a team to decide what the most important stuff to focus on that week is. It’s more agile because you can shift between phases as needed based on the biggest fires you are fighting. Atlassian can explain it better than me.
While going through the motions of it all I noticed the older crowd liked the “Waterfall” and the youngsters were “Agile” with it. I also noticed that people under a certain age would Google first, and start project planning second. The older crowd went straight into project planning and scoping, then they hit the Googles.
Informally, I had a sample size of a couple of hundred people. I noticed that the pivot point (for North America at least) was people who finished high school in 98 vs those who finished later. Then I learned when Google came to be and it all began to snap into place.
Imagine researching topics before Google
I don’t have to imagine it. I had to do it all the time as a kid when we got those projects to talk about a country or an animal. You’d go to the library, find yourself a book and look for relevant information.
After scouring a bunch of books, you would compile the information into your report and attach your sources. Then there was Wikipedia, databases of Peer Reviewed articles and a whole world wide web of data to be scoured. Arguably a lot of the “research” skills I learned as a child were pretty useless. By the time I was in CEGEP (weird Quebec school thing) you could find pretty much anything online.
Social media was alive and popping and when that BBM lit up you probably were getting laid sometime soon. I don’t remember using the John Abbott Library much for research purposes. Even without Wikipedia, there were just legitimate sources online, especially before the paygates were in full effect.
I remember the olden, not so connected times where we played outside, but I grew into the stare at my phone type. One day we should talk about stranger danger and how it’s the Boomers fault we don’t play outside anymore. Encyclopaedias and libraries were, and still are, a very key source of learning. Big love to the old Cote St. Luc Public Library. I read many books there.
Google changed how we learn
Given I was exposed to the old ways and the new ways, I can assure you that the Google way changed everything. You could argue in academia and school that perhaps tech makes children lazier. They will be chastised for plagiarism and all that.Then they will go to work, and be taught to plagerize ideas legally for profit. Here’s how a lot of stuff works with companies, they watch what their competitors do, and steal everything that works. Notice how all of a sudden everyone has “bol'' dishes now?
I appreciate the disciplined methods of the past. I think experiencing the archaic helped me become who I am today. But I can promise you, YouTube is the best entry level course teacher in the world. Reddit & Quora are full of expert communities sharing knowledge.
Why go to a library when I can get actually qualified people (at least on Quora) to give legitimate expertise on my specific problem? Information has become a crowd sharing commodity. A lot of the ways we learn now are based on watching the successes and failures of others at unprecedented scale. We have efficient tools to spy on each other and get that data. Before 1998, searching online was more complicated.Google changed up the entire spectrum of how knowledge would be shared forever.
What is “The Google Divide”?
“The Google Divide” is the moment in time when learning changed. The closer you are to becoming an adult in 98, the more your life blends both realities. If you finished educationl before 98, you are on that old school tip. People finishing school after that year, tend to be more open to technology and “Google first, plan later” mentalities.
This piece isn’t meant to say one way is better than the other. Like all things, technology creates a new scale upon which to measure it all. Life today is simply incomparable to the past. In some ways it’s better now, in others it’s probably creating shorter attention spans.
I think it’s worth paying attention to these kinds of things. It gets even more complex when you consider Google isn’t global in 98. It takes some time for it to become truly a worldwide phenomenon. So the “Google Divide” may change depending on where you come from. It’s worth keeping that in mind when you encounter new folk, you really don’t know their technological history.
Anyway I think that’s it for today.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone