Living in the technology age

I don't know what I would do without Google. It is something I use now to get info on just about everything - recipes, definitions, translations of words and phrases in other languages, picutres of things for art references, ideas for Bible studies, you get the picture. It seems to be the catchall for things unknown - within reason of course, but it's just always there a click away if I need it.

I know as well as the next guy that you have to take what you find there with a grain of salt, but, there are so many and varied answers for each question, that often all it takes is some comparison and a little bit of background work. But, with all of these answers and all of this information at the tips of our fingers (literally), are we being created as a society that no longer thinks for ourselves, but immediately turns to someone else's ideas to form our own? We're taking a veritable back seat to life if that is the case, and the idea of reinventing the wheel has been done away with all together, it seems instead that we have mass produced the wheel instead to such a degree that our supply will never run out.

I know this sounds like quite an extreme perspective, after all, with the comment I made earlier about having to examine the information we find, it seems that the information is merely a springboard to finding the true information on our own so that we can put it to work for whatever purpose we deem necessary. However, that is assuming that everyone who uses the info actually does consider it. Reality is that everything from our neighbor's personal information to the answers to next weeks test to a copy of that essay on the war in Iraq is available to us, with no necessary work (as long as the price is right).

How then, do we keep ourselves, and others for that matter, from falling into the habit of turning off our minds and letting the existing information be the be all end all of our existence? One thing is sure - make sure when you're surfing the web, the waves of information don't drag you in with them.