Many believe that the average Internet surfer lacks intelligence and to verify this conclusion they point to the keyword searches for Google. Indeed it is interesting to see the kinds of things people are searching on the Internet, which are completely irrelevant to life on Earth. They search the names of movie stars, people on survivor, sexual questions and various pop-culture things. Does this mean these people are stupid? One might think so by looking at that and to those statistics in the keyword searches for Google. But, let me point out another fact. May be the largest percentage of Internet surfers and users are in fact using the Internet for entertainment instead of watching television. Now then, consider what kinds of shows are on TV and what kind of topics are in the news? Much of the same thing that people are searching on the Internet; that is to say maybe the Internet is competing with the television set for entertainment value. Perhaps this is what people do in their spare time. We know that humans like to watch TV and apparently they love to surf the Internet as well. If you go to any bookstore in the evening you'll see people hanging around reading books, but that is a small percentage of our population. Likewise the intellectual type of topics that we find in keyword searches for Google are a very low percentage of the total keywords searched. So perhaps we should not rush to judgment by the kinds of things that people are surfing for on the Internet as an indication of the intelligence of humans? Or maybe we should. You decide. Consider this in 2006. |
