The Dumbing Down of America
I'd like to believe in the general intelligence of human kind. But, as a "tech" person (READ: geek), I certainly see a lot of this. Basically, his point is that people ask stupid questions which they could simply ask of Google to save them the trouble. I agree that people are too quick to ask questions frequently, but I believe an enormous amount of this comes from a certained "learned helplessness". Until VERY recently, computers were so difficult to use that attempting to do anything would result in nothing but pain and frustration. Even now, technology is spectacularly difficult to use, though it is getting better. Until we make technology as simple as a telephone or a television, expect people to continue to trust others to do the hard work for them. Especially if the primary source of that research involves the web.