The web is no longer principally a shopping and entertainment medium, but is now an answer hunting and gathering system. This presentation examines some recent research in web usability and psychology and argues that efficient web searching is transforming cognition, personality, and learning.

1. My year without Search The unconscious changes that efficient search engines are having on our consciousness

2. A conversation about a future project…

3. It all began with my father … … and his Alzheimer’s

4. Anxiety about forgetting , about concentrating , about sustained reading

5. Then I read something that reduced my anxiety …

7. “ I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print.” Nicholas Carr, “Is Google making Us Stoopid,” The Atlantic (July/August 2008)

8. Anecdotes?

9. So began my idea for a research project…

10. conceptual underpinnings

11. http://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com/pictures/echo-narcissus-1903/ Narcissus Myth as interpreted by Marshall McLuhan

12. “ Now the point of this myth is the fact that men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any material other than themselves.” Marshall McLuhan, “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis,” Understanding Media (1964) Technologies are Extensions of ourselves

13. “ To behold, use or perceive any extension of ourselves in technological form is necessarily to embrace it.” Marshall McLuhan, “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis,” Understanding Media (1964) “ To listen to radio or to read the printed page is to accept these extensions… into our personal system and to undergo the closure or displacement of perception that follows automatically .”

14. Marshall McLuhan, “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis,” Understanding Media (1964) that puts us in the Narcissus role of … “ It is this continuous embrace of our own technology … numbness in relation to these images [extensions] of ourselves.”

15. We are thus too numb to recognize that As such, we tend to be unconscious of the real effects of technology on the individual. “ Man in the normal use of technology … is perpetually modified by it.” Marshall McLuhan, “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis,” Understanding Media (1964)

16. “ if men learn this [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; Plato, “Phaedrus,” The Collected Dialogues (275a) they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written.”

17. In pre-literate societies poetry was a tribal encyclopedia

18. The transition to writing was accompanied by changes in the nature of human thought. the abstract concepts of literacy The formulaic image-thinking of orality was replaced by

19. “ More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness.”

20. We’re shocked … NOT

21. Of course, no one is that shocked any more by the idea that literacy has a profound effect on our thinking.

22. Cognitive neuroscience shows that as a reader develops, there are continuous physical changes in a variety of brain areas. D. Caplan, “Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Written Sentence Comprehension,” Scientific Studies of Reading 8 (2004)

23. my next step

24. web usability the ease with which people can use the web in order to achieve a particular goal.

26. http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdolishny/2760207306 Usability is important

27. Usability experts have observed that over past 5-6 years the nature of web usage has dramatically changed.

29. Information foragers are seeking very specific prey

30. Because search engines make it easy to find patches, foragers will spend little time looking for prey. rely on search engines Information foragers to get to the “information patch”

31. “ learning to use the Internet is a process of transitioning from casual ‘looking’ to more focused searching for an answer to a ‘specific question’.” Howard + Massanari, “ Learning to Search and Searching to Learn ”, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (2007)

32. WHY is this important?

33. The velocity of web usage … … is now quite surprising…

34. long do you spend viewing your average web page? HOW

35. are displayed for less than 25% of all web pages four seconds! Weinreich et al, “ Off the Beaten Tracks: Exploring Three Aspects of Web Navigation ”, IW3C2 2006

36. are shorter than 52% of all visits ten seconds! Only about 11% are visited for more than 2 minutes. Weinreich et al, “ Off the Beaten Tracks: Exploring Three Aspects of Web Navigation ”, IW3C2 2006

37. Weinreich et al, “ Off the Beaten Tracks: Exploring Three Aspects of Web Navigation ”, IW3C2 2006

38. WHY is this happening?

39. SCANNING

40. The vast majority of web pages are scanned and not read by most users

41. The focus on usability this decade has succeeded in achieving broad acceptance of conventions in the design of web sites

42. Weinreich et al, “ Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Usage ”, ACM Transactions on the Web (February 2008)

43. Eye-tracking studies

44. Nielsen Group, “F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content,” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html (April 17, 2006)

45. “ F is for fast . That's how users read your precious content. In a few seconds , their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school.” Nielsen Group, “F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content,” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html (April 17, 2006)

46. Nielsen Group, “Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion,” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html (June 12, 2006) Notice Red areas show only first two words in headlines are read

47. Humans are hard-wired to excel at fast scanning Reading is unnatural, but scanning is not.

48. Nielsen Group, “First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye,” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nanocontent.html (April 6, 2009) Users read only the first More recent research shows eleven characters More recent research shows … 12345678901 of an online headline (forget about the body text).

50. WHAT does Google have to do with this?

51. Google search and result pages account for almost a quarter of all pages Weinreich et al, “ Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Usage ”, ACM Transactions on the Web (February 2008)

52. It is the perfect tool for facilitating fast convenient answer-seeking web behavior.

53. It is the necessary partner scanning behavior for the rapid of information foragers.

54. It facilitates the quick scanning and foraging behavior of contemporary web usage.

55. HOW does Google work?

56. The exact algorithm is a trade secret . It ranks pages according to the quantity of “ link-backs” from other sites.

57. There is no need to know Boolean logic or other esoterica.

58. WIN Google is full of

59. Nielsen + Loranger, Prioritizing Web usability , 2006 Google is so good that … 75% of users stick to first page of SERP 50% of users click on 1 st choice Majority behavior if not clicking on first two choices? Reformulate search 20% of users click on 2 nd choice

60. Nielsen + Loranger, Prioritizing Web usability , 2006 Brand-X searches: 93% of users stick to first page of SERP

61. ISSUES ?

62. Is online research narrowing scholarship? One

63. “ Collectively, the models presented illustrate that as journal archives came online … citations became more concentrated within fewer articles.” “ by enabling scientists to quickly reach and converge with prevailing opinion, electronic journals hasten scientific consensus” James A Evans, “Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship,” Science 321 (July 18, 2008)

64. Power Law Distribution rules the web (and more). http://www.congo-education.net/wealth-of-networks/figure-7-4.gif

65. http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/uploaded_images/Hitwise%20July%202005-719785.JPG http://www.hitwise.com/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html

66. http://threesixty360.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/forbes-billionaires1.jpg http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/so_graph1.png http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3643/3431254269_fd26579096.jpg

67. Whether you look at the web as a whole or any subsection within it (blogs, political sites, sports sites, etc) you see power law distributions.

68. “ We introduce a new term to describe the organizational structure we find: ‘ googlearchy ’ – the rule of the most heavily linked.” Matthew Hindman et al , “’Googlearchy’: how a few heavily-linked sites dominate politics on the web,” Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association , 2003

69. This doesn’t fit the hype of the web as a radically de-centralizing force.

70. The introduction of cheaper rotary printing presses (in 19 th century) was initially a centrifugal force … But over time, they (along with other agents) acted as a centripetal force and centralized print into a few major newspapers and book presses. in that there was a flowering of many new print sources (penny presses, community papers, union leaflets, etc). That is, a power law distribution developed.

71. “ This research ironically intimates that the chief values of print library research is poor indexing .” “ By drawing researchers through unrelated articles, print browsing and perusal may have facilitated broader comparisons and led researchers into the past.” James A Evans, “Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship,” Science 321 (July 18, 2008)

72. Search dependency ? Two

73. “ Based on our research and that of others… … it seems that many adolescents take a reactive stance to searching the internet, reframing their inquiries around what can be easily found.” Guinee et al , “ Adolescents’ Search Strategies, ” Journal of Educational Computing Research 29 (2003)

74. “ Into the potentially problematic category we would place the unquestioning attitude about the search engine, Google , which many students see as the total answer to all their information needs.” Kiili et al , “ Students evaluating Internet Sources, ” Journal of Educational Computing Research 39 (2008)

75. “ Students in this study seemed to have a great deal of confidence in their abilities to distinguish the good sites from the bad.” “ Students are also not consistently able to differentiate between advertising and fact.” Graham and Metaxis, “ Of Course it’s true; I saw it on the Internet, ” Communications of the ACM (2003) Yet

76. “ Overall only about 1 in 6 searchers … can consistently distinguish between paid and unpaid results.” Pew Internet and American Life Project, “Search Engine Users,” (2005)

77. Remember scanning behavior!

78. Pre-reflexive thinkers [about 78% of students in this study were categorized as such] usually only choose the first hits selected by the search engine (in a research task), regardless of whether they were or were not ‘sponsored links’. Whitmore, “The relationship between undergraduate epistemological beliefs, reflective judgment, and their information-seeking behavior,” Information Processing and Management 40 (2004) 50% of users click on 1 st choice

79. Google Usability analyst Jakob Nielsen calls it: Gullibility Nielsen Group, “User Skills Improving, But Only Slightly,” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/user-skills.html (Feb 4, 2008)

80. Cognitive impairment ? Three

81. This is the key one … but is still under-studied

82. Are efficient search engines actually changing our cognitive abilities, perhaps for the worse?

83. There are plenty of grumpy old teacher stories about kids nowadays…

84. “ The research literature on young people’s use of information technology in their learning suggests that in the case of assignment completion at least, what was more important than entertainment or interest was to finish by the expending the least amount of effort .” British Library/JISC Study, Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future (2007) “ The popularity of Google is facilitating laziness, poor scholarship, and complacent thinking.” Tara Brabazan, the University of Google: Education in the (post) information age (2007)

85. I have tried to provide a range of evidence that suggests we should be worried about cognitive impairment.

86. Yet there have been some claims that in fact the new media environment is making us smarter .

87. These claims are mainly founded on the Flynn Effect (IQ test scores have been rising 3-5 points per decade since 1930s) This growth has however been in scores below the median, not above it. Sundet et al, “The end of the Flynn effect?” Intelligence 32 (2004) Strangely, mean SAT score results since 1950s have steadily declined. Flynn, “The mean IQ of Americans: Massive gains 1932 to 1978,” Psychological Bulletin , 95,

88. Recent research indicates Flynn Effect has reversed in the past decade. Sundet et al , “The end of the Flynn effect?” Intelligence 32 (2004) Teasdale and Owen, “Secular declines in cognitive test scores: A reversal of the Flynn Effect” Intelligence 36 (2008) Teasdale and Owen, “A long-term rise and recent decline in intelligence test performance: The Flynn Effect in reverse” Intelligence 39 (2005)

89. “ almost all of the modest gain between 1988 and 1998 derived from the geometric figures test of spatial ability.” Teasdale and Owen, “A long-term rise and recent decline in intelligence test performance: The Flynn Effect in reverse” Intelligence 39 (2005)

90. Leisure paper-based reading still remains one of the strongest correlates of post-secondary success. Gallik, “Do they read for pleasure? Recreational reading habits of college students,” J ournal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 42 (1999) Kaiser Family Foundation, Generation M (2005)

91. National Endowment for the Arts, http://www.arts.gov/research/ReadingonRise.pdf (January 2009)

92. WHAT should we do?

93. - Rilke “ Archaic Torso of Apollo ” “ You must change your life” http://www.wordswordswords.us/images/apollo.jpg

94. “ we need to find structural ways to push our students back into libraries to discover the value of wandering up the corridors of journal stacks.” Tara Brabazan, the University of Google: Education in the (post) information age (2007)

95. SUCH AS? 1. Explicit bibliographic expectations e.g., 2 books, 2 print-based refereed articles, 1 non-refereed web site, etc 2. Academic search printouts e.g., Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, etc 3. No research, but fixed, substantial, printed-out readings e.g., provide students with substantial number of readings from which they have to read a percentage. 4. Teach and re-teach how to evaluate information Don’t expect the high schools to do this for you! Even if you think you’re reading, you probably aren’t.

96. My Year Without Search Book Web site http://www.myyearwithoutsearch.com

97. Randy Connolly Dept. Computer Science & Information Systems Mount Royal College, Calgary [email_address]