Could we survive without Google?

Unfortunately the phrase ‘Google it’ is too often heard where I work, and undoubtedly used throughout the world.  It seems that one can get by in an IT job just by being able to search the internet.  Even I catch myself trying to solve problems online when I really should have spent a bit more time trying to figure it out.  It is just too easy sometimes.

I’m not against using search technologies, and can appreciate the efficiencies from learning from past mistakes and preventing the reinvention of the proverbial wheel.  I’ll be the first person to admit when I to know something, I’ll ‘Google it’, and I usually demand that I find out immediately – the knowledge must be in the now.

Rewind 10+ years, I recall a support environment that I was in.  At the time it was pre-Google, and when the accessibility to the internet was limited to one terminal in our workplace of 300 staff.  How did I ever survive?  Fortunately learning on the job, learning from books, and learning from peers was common practice.  For the most part I learned how to troubleshoot and resolve problems.  I learned how to think.

Since then I have hired support staff and I can attest that analytical problem solving skills are lacking in a large number of candidates.  These people are typically ‘Gen-Y‘ and they don’t have the drive to just figure it out for themselves.  This may be fine for mainstream applications where documentation, forums and blog posts are abound and plentiful, but very problematic for bespoke applications or mainstream applications which have very closed documentation sources.

We live in an information rich age and accessibility is everywhere.  It has become our way of life.  However I do question if we will come to a situation where we could survive without Google, or other search technologies.  Probably not completely, but I challenge you to spend some time to get your thinking hat on before you start pounding the keys and ‘Google it’. As we proceed further, we present to you the latest Hawkhost Review and hope y’all guys enjoy it as much as we did.

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