Like googly, Google is all about reading it right

Nikhila Pant Dhawan

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Tribune News Service

Bathinda, March 10

Students of various colleges raised several thought-provoking questions and points as they participated in the debate on the topic ‘Googlization – Thumbs up or thumbs down?’. The Tribune Inter-college Debate was organised today in Bathinda at the Baba Farid Group of Institutions wherein 20 contestants from different colleges of the district spoke in favour and against the motion.

Government Rajindra College won the Best College Award with its student Harshpreet Kaur winning the first position and Nahush winning the third position in the debate competition. The second prize was won by Sathrup Dutta, a student of Malwa College. Manpreet Kaur Dhillon, Ayush Sachdeva and Asha Kumari Poonia, all students of Baba Farid Group of Institutions were given the consolation prizes.

One must not be a slave

Speaking against the motion, Harshpreet Kaur argued that she was not against the technological advancements being made across the world as it was taking the world forward, but added that one must master these advancements rather than becoming their slaves. She also added that googlisation had a powerful financial aspect for which the personal data of internet consumers were being sold and shared with companies.

Lives adversely affected

Speaking against the topic, Sathrup Dutta argued that our lives have been adversely affected by increasing googlization. To prove his point of the present generation’s dependency on the search engines offered by the internet, he gave the example that before preparing for the competition, he looked up the work ‘googlization’ on the internet. He impressed upon the fact that googlization was slowly killing the reading habits of the youth and also had a big hand in degrading the quality of research work being done by students.

World comes together

Pointing out the positive effects of googlization of the present era, Nahush took up the recent cases of suicide by the Central University of Hyderabad student Rohith Vemula and arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the students union of Jawaharlal Nehru University. She argued that the internet was helping the world come together and also making the voices of the people, especially those belonging to backward sections of the society, heard.

Inroads into personal lives

Manpreet Kaur Dhillon of Baba Farid College of Education argued that googlisation had made inroads into personal lives as well by offering everything on a platter. She added that it was turning the present generation into lazy beings by killing their creativity, dampening their quest for knowledge and diverting their minds by giving them free and unlimited access to violent, pornographic, misleading information and other objectionable content. She finished by saying that one could gauge the extent of googlization by the fact that we were becoming slaves of the internet rather than enslaving it for our use.

Security concerns

Abhimanyu Rana of Baba Farid College of Management and Technology argued that googlization had also added to the security concerns of the countries across the world as the internet was being used by terrorist organizations to misguide and recruit members from far away countries. He added that rather than completely depending on the internet for garnering information, the students must begin asking questions and indulge in discussions with their teachers who have amassed knowledge through studying and their work experience.

Helping out students

Another contestant, Tania Dhaka of SSD Women College of Information Technology, stated that googlisation had proved its worth by offering several features, applications and information in a hassle-free and fast manner. She lauded the internet for helping the students in more ways than one by offering magazines and journals through e-libraries from across the world which would have otherwise been out of reach for the students.

Making people think

Appreciating the presentation of views by the participants, one of the judges, assistant executive engineer of Guru Hargobind Thermal Power Plant, Karamvir Singh stated that such debate competitions make the students look at everyday happenings from a different perspective and also make the audience think. He motivated the students to come forward and groom themselves for the outside world by enhancing their confidence levels by participating in such competitions.

Principal of Saint Paul’s High School, Anal Lawrence, who was also a part of the panel of judges, threw bouncers at the contestants by asking them tricky questions. While he asked one of the contestants if she had googled the meaning of the word ‘Google’, he stunned another contestant by asking if he had tried searching for the same word on two adjacent computers and if the results on both the computers were similar.

Elaborating on his views on the topic of the debate, Lawrence made the point that although he gave a thumbs up to googlisation, he firmly believed that technology is made for us and we are not made for technology and hence, we must sift through the information provided by the search engines by using the google which is inside us – our brain.

Chief guest at the event, DIG Bathinda Range, Ranbir Singh Khatra shared anecdotes from his life and gave examples on how googlization was changing the world. Sharing that he was a humanities student during his college years, he also recalled his initiation into the world of computers during his career in Punjab police.

Chairman of Baba Farid Group of institutions, Gurmeet Singh Dhaliwal appreciated the topic for the debate and called it pertinent for the youth. In his address, he asked the students to look inwards and find out what they wish to do in future and access the difference made in their personalities and their lives by the education system of which they were a part. He also stressed on outcome-based education system rather than input-based system and requested the faculty members to set an aim for themselves as well.

Studentspeak

The internet was helping the world come together and also making the voices of the people, especially those belonging to backward sections of the society, heard. — Nahush

Googlisation has made inroads into personal lives as well by offering everything on a platter. It is turning the present generation into lazy beings by killing their creativity, dampening their quest for knowledge and diverting their minds by giving them free and unlimited access to violent, pornographic, misleading information and other objectionable content.  — Manpreet Kaur Dhillon

Googlisation has also added to the security concerns of the countries across the world as the internet is being used by terrorist organisations to misguide and recruit members from far away countries. — Abhimanyu Rana

studentspeak

Googlisation has proved its worth by offering several features, applications and information in a hassle-free and fast manner. The internet is helping the students in more ways than one by offering magazines and journals through e-libraries from across the world which would have otherwise been out of reach for the students. — Tania Dhaka