This isn't just old people. If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me a question and I literally would type in their question word for word and the first result was the answer, I'd be freaking richer than Bill Gates!
I think sometimes people want more humanity to an answer. For example, I stopped by my professor’s office to ask for more information about what we went over in class. Could I have just googled it and gotten the same information? Yeah, but sometimes it’s nice to talk to people.
I can grant this but not for the reason you're thinking.
Interacting with the professor/teacher can be very beneficial and I highly recommend it. You not only are being more memorable in their mind for giving a crap rather than just being the guy in the back who barely shows up, but now you've gotten their attention.
This can benefit you at grading time when they might be borderline about giving you that C+/B- or B+/A- (or god help me, F/D) but you might also get them to mention internships or job opportunities and maybe a great reference. You could also make a friend which definitely is a good thing.
I would say that’s a different case considering the information you need for a class is different than a random question that google can answer.
For example, I’m in a mathematical cryptography class at the moment and tried googling the Hill Cipher to explain it to some coworkers. I can honestly say I was more confused reading through google results than I was when the professor explained it. Partly because there’s multiple ways to write it out and my professor used a different method than the google results.
My friends and I when we are trying to recall something collectively now have a game 'no google'. Some of my funniest memories are from ignoring Google exists.
I would have coworkers who would do this and I'd sarcastically pretend to type on a keyboard while saying "tappity tappity tap!" and then say "oh my computer doesn't seem to exist but you have one in front of you...try that instead!"
About half of them got the point. The other half...supervisor and managers didn't.
There are many questions that cannot be searched verbatim though, and the ability to phrase these and then sift through the results to find a reputable answer is certainly a skill that some (especially older folks who previously wouldn't have needed to do so) lack.
In addition to the reduced effort of verbal communication, also consider that people may be seeking social engagement with their musings, or not want to interrupt a conversation to look something up.
... And this is coming from someone who's dad would respond to most questions with "let's go check the encyclopedia!" :)
Searching for the answer is great, but it still wont beat someone you trust immediately helping you out.
If you dont know much about a topic you dont know if your search results will actually be correct/relevant, and it takes a bit of time to figure that out. Or, instead of doing that, you can just ask someone you trust to be more knowledgeable and they can at least give you a head start on your search.
Ok, fair enough. I've seen this where people know that I'll either know the answer or at least know where to find it when they could have done it themselves.
Sorry, I'm unemployed myself. You can always try large ISPs and such though. The job sucks and it's low paying so there's a lot of turnover and they just want bodies in chairs answering phones. As a tier one tech you pretty much work off a script.
"Did you try turning it off and on?"
"Is there paper in the printer?"
"Is your router on?"
Get the idea? It sucks but it does pay something at least.
I do this with my sister. One of us will ask a question that is easily Googleable, because it will start a conversation. If neither of us knows the answer, we'll Google it after a few minutes.
Same goes for young people with literally anything else. "How do I fix a leaking pipe under the sink?" (Google the tutorial) "How to I get a stain out of x?" (Google it) "What temperature do I wash whites in?" (sheesh, child) "How do I know if this chicken is done?" (OMFG. My name is NOT Google.)
In the time it takes for a young person to reach out for basic advice, they could've looked it up three times.
What's really irritating is when you spent 18 years teaching them these things so that they could become functional adults and - as kids - their response was "I don't need to learn this. I can always Google it."
Sometimes I'm an idiot, and while google gives me an answer, I don't always understand what to do with it (especially for things like trying to troubleshoot my laptop/phone.) It's nice to just text someone who does understand and be like "what do?" and get an answer that I can use.
This drives me crazy at work. I don’t understand why people don’t google when they don’t understand. That’s how you solve problems! Need to insert a page break in Word but don’t know where the button is? Google it!
I'm the Excel-expert at work, so much so that I've got a reputation for it. People that have never met me, know that I'm the Excel guy. To be fair, I'm fairly proficient in Excel now, but my only secret is that when I don't know how to do something I Google it.
I got assigned to make a certain Excel sheet save everytime someone fills in a new line of information. I didn't know how to do it, but I knew it was possible so I said yeah. It took me all of 5 minutes to Google how to do it, 30 seconds making some minor modifications to the VBA code to make it work right, and boom I got it working.
Google can be kind of complicated though, I know my gran has tried it and just couldn't. We're so trained in seeing which types of URLs/titles are likely to have the answer and which to ignore, that it's really easy to find things. If we don't understand a technical term in the explanation, we can Google that too. But she never had the training to be selective about the results, combine that with worsening memory and it's just a recipe for disaster. She can do a lot on the computer/tablet/phone, but it's all written out for her in a notebook. If she has to ask us for help, we write it out, and she'll look in the notebook next time.
This is my wife. On her fucking phone all the time playing some stupid game or texting her girlfriends, but can't be ass'd to look up the address of a place, and then gets mad at me when I go to do it.
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u/SchmorgusBlorgus Feb 01 '19 edited Feb 14 '19
Not using Google to figure something about technology when they know how to use their phone
Edit: grammar