Serendipity Lost? How Instant Answers Limit Unexpected Learning
When every search leads straight to the answer, what discoveries are we missing along the way?
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Stephanie Rosenbloom, in her book Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude, has this beautiful way of describing serendipity in learning,
"It is through serendipitous encounters with objects and strangers that the world speaks to us, but we have to be listening."
But in today’s world, we love instant answers.
This makes it very hard to listen.
If you want to know the capital of Madagascar, you just type the question into Google, and in seconds, you have the answer: Antananarivo. (I mean, that’s what I just did.)
But that’s also a problem. Google gives the response. And it’s right. And you’re…done.
There is no reminiscing about that friend who went to study the social lives of lemurs in Madagascar in the 90s and came back with lessons on human social learning. No, really, I have a friend who did this. Where did he live again? There is no tangent taken to discuss the largest cities in Africa, or that the majority of African immigrants to the US are from Nigeria. Not relevant.
You ask a question, and it’s answered.
There’s nothing pushing you forward, no deeper curiosity sparked, no side alley to slip into and explore. It’s like taking a regimented tour with no freedom to branch out on your own. There is no taking the path less taken.
Is anyone else worried about this, or is it just me? 👇
I’ve been thinking about this a lot as family dinner, with no devices and minds up and ears out and all that become a thing in our house. Dinners are so different from the way they were when I was growing up.
We thought, if only we could easily find out the backstory of the person who owns the new restaurant that just opened, or the US city with the greatest demographic shifts in the last ten years or the best recipe for German Apple pancakes.
And those questions turned into stories, and imagined stories, and calling people who knew the stories. Those questions had us laughing, and finding that book in the den with the note from that guy….you get it.
Answering those questions involved connection and conversation and conjecture.
Now, we have answers for all (well, most) of that.
Certainly, we’ve gained efficiency, knowledge, easy access to global information.
But what have we lost?
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