SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can't be realistically completed?
Eco: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.
It would be hard to look at to-do or shopping lists the same again after reading this. Of Google Eco has this to say :
Google makes a list, but the minute I look at my Google-generated list, it has already changed. These lists can be dangerous -- not for old people like me, who have acquired their knowledge in another way, but for young people, for whom Google is a tragedy. Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating.
There is something reactionary and hidebound in not wanting children to grow too dependent on Google and learn to source information from other sources the more painful, old fashioned way. I am guilty of doing this myself. Weaning kids off Google is difficult because it so dramatically simplifies their lives. Spending a few minutes doing a search on their topic is all takes kids to get their job done. As a parent who grew up before the internet happened, it is probably natural to worry about a child's absolute dependence on Internet search fearing that it can kill intellectual curiosity and make a young person flat out lazy.
