Friday 15 August 2014

What Ever Happened to Curiosity?

I'm curious - what makes you curious?

A recent Toronto Star article about waning curiosity in the age of iPads, smartphones, and constant access to Google has got me thinking about this essential human trait.

George Leslie, author of the book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, argues that Google "is curiosity's best friend and worst enemy at the same time". When getting information is just too easy, such as typing a word or query into the Google search box and getting an immediate answer, our natural human curiosity can dampen. Perhaps we click on the Wikipedia page, scan the opening paragraph, and then walk away with an immediate but superficial answer.

Great thinkers in the past like Leonardo Da Vinci, Charles Darwin, or Benjamin Franklin were men of great curiosity, but without the existence of Google in their time, they would have had to go to much more extreme lengths to find the answers to their questions - it was definitely not as easy as searching something on the web!

Leslie is not totally opposed to Google and its capabilities though - he asserts that the search engine does have its upsides. For naturally curious people, he says,  Google can enhance their thirst for knowledge - but, if you're naturally lazy, Google can make you lazier.

I think that there are other ways to ignite our curiosity and search for knowledge - methods that don't even involve the use of the internet. What about fiction? Nature? Sports? Art?

So, what makes YOU curious?

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