You Are Not So Smart 063 - The Search Effect - Matthew Fisher
Nov 19, 2015
53:13
What effect does Google have on your brain? Here's an even weirder question: what effect does knowing that you have access to Google have on your brain?
In this episode we explore what happens when a human mind becomes aware that it can instantly, on-command, at any time, search for the answer to any question, and then, most of time, find it.
According to researcher Matthew Fisher, one of the strange side effects is an inflated sense of internal knowledge. In other words, as we use search engines, over time we grow to mistakenly believe we know more than we actually do even when we no longer have access to the internet.