Localization of Search and the Proliferation of Mobile

My penultimate assignment in the course Understanding Media by Understanding Google on Coursera centered on the localization of news, books, politics, heroes, etc based on the convenience of generation Y and Z, to easily access them on their mobile. Thus, because a lot of people today are finding it harder to let go of their mobile devices (%75 of Americans are with their phones for up to 20 hours daily), there's that debate whether if peering in to phones in the middle of a task, is beneficial and deepening that original task because the person is engaged; or it is a distraction from the original task, because the individual is bored. Find my argument below:

Owen Youngman posits, that the new "local" will no longer be defined by physical attributes, but by convenience and ease or the use of less effort, especially in accessing news, or relevant information via digital media; albeit the ease that comes on our mobile devices. However, more than often, because we feel that "local" can go around with us in our pockets, mobile could begin to define "multi-tasking". I disagree with this growing notion, therefore, I opine that if someone instinctively and repeatedly picks up a mobile device to consume media (or conduct Google searches) while engaged in another activity, he/she is bored and seeking to be distracted from the first activity.

Before completing this assignment, I had not totally taken a look at all relevant course materials for the week, because I had a hashtag conference project, and had to do the reports before the end of the financial year, today. Thus, moving from one article, to watching Joe Kraus' video and then unto Youngman's seemed like a man seeking for answer from all materials at the same time -- "multi-tasking" like Joe Kraus said in his video. However, after four hours of that plus taking breaks to look at my tab, reply tweets, watch some Mexico vs Netherlands battle it out in Brazil, I had just written the first paragraph of this assignment, albeit, with the other assertion that "I was being engaged, and seeking to enhance and deepen the first activity".

But there could not be any better example to buttress my point than my own very experience, because after taking 45 minutes out to read Nicholas Carr's "Is Google making us Stupid" and another 20 minutes in keenly watching Kraus' video, I am now able to drop the report writing for my assignment, knowing that I'm not really multi-tasking,but distracting myself from accomplishing either tasks. Thus, because I feel that switching from one article to the other could quickly help me reach my answer faster, achieving "efficiency" and "immediacy" like Mr. Carr writes, results in me achieving nothing in the end.

The conclusion is that I have had to abandon the report for my assignment, and I'm glad to say that after 2 hours of reading and watching the course materials, I didn't only get better grasp of the question, I am able to complete my assignment before deadline, after which I shall now pursue my report writing in earnest.

The Googlization of Everything- Good or Bad for Books?

Recently, I enrolled for a course, Understanding Media by Understanding Google on Coursera andmy first assignment was to put up a write up. less than 350 words, explaining whether the digitization of books is good or bad. This is what I thought: 

The golden age of books “…was slow to take shape, suddenly glorious...”[1] but certainly not over. Perhaps the age of glamorous bookstores and museum-sized commercial libraries – built on rigid capitalist business models – is but, “quickly over”[2]. [What happened was that] the nature of the product expanded.”[3] This paradigm shift, has not just affected news, or newspapers or books. It has affected everything. Digital media explosion is changing the panorama and how we do things.
Thing is, the rules have changed. Today, “customers are in charge”[4]. People are eager to delve in to the new world of advanced technology, and their needs are increasing by the day. Digitizing books by google is good, because this means that a book sat in a New York or Milano Library but relevant for a researcher in Colombo, can now be available for rent or purchase within minutes. Thus, “instead of an economy based on scarcity, today’s is based on abundance”[5].
It is however, bad for Unions (who are said to 'dig holes' in the pocket of authors unnecessarily) and large bookstores – which have initially caused a dry up of local ‘indie’ libraries – as this affects their business models. With advanced technology and the interconnectivity that it affords, “people can find each other anywhere and coalesce around you or against you”[6]. And it is these people whom it has coalesced against, that Eric Thomas was referring to, when he said, “We’ve never been able to see what the Internet adds, we can only see what it subtracts”[7]. “It’s [perhaps then] tragic that the Internet hasn’t destroyed our tendency to paint with such a broad brush”[8].

[1] Warsh, D. "The Golden Age of Newspapers: A Short History," 8/12/2013, http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2013.08.12/1528.html

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.