Is Google making us intellectually lazy?

That was the gist of a question financial wildman Jim Cramer asked Google's CEO Eric Schmidt on a CNBC interview this week. Cramer pointed out that one of his daughter's fifth-grade teachers banned the use of Google for an assignment she received. Schmidt seemed genuinely surprised by the anecdote, comparing it to how math teachers often ban the use of calculators.

Schmidt called Google 'a new way of learning ... Kids are going from knowing everything to being able to search (for information) very quickly.'

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I have to agree with Schmidt.

For me at least, the Internet and search engines haven't made me lazier, but more inquisitive. Not a day goes by that I don't find myself doing a search on a topic I've never studied, a person I've never heard of, a word I've never learned, etc. And I don't think the Internet has let me down yet in terms of finding the information that I seek.

Last week, I was writing a short story about a loan officer for my writing class, and I was worried about the piece's verisimilitude, so I went online to do some research. There was just a ton of stuff out there, from consumer advocacy organizations discussing how to get a loan, to government agencies explaining the daily life of a loan officer.  Some of it was overkill for my purposes, but even adding just a couple of small details to the story really helped make it more believable.

And I can't even imagine doing my job - researching stocks - without having the Internet at my disposal.  The productivity boost I get from finding information so much faster than ever before possible far outweighs the potential risks of relying too heavily on other people's work, which can at times either be based on faulty assumptions or, worse, just plain wrong.

Schmidt's calculator analogy is somewhat apt. The Internet and search are tools which help us more easily find basic facts and figures, but if we're looking for anything more than simple answers, and we don't understand the underlying issues or concepts, they won't do us much good.

Remember, trivia does not equal knowledge. And knowledge doesn't equal intelligence.

So, in the meantime, I'm going to continue to do what my girlfriend tells me to do whenever I question one of her dubious oddball statements: 'S-T-F-W!' she'll say, exasperated that i just won't believe her.

Don't know what that means? Neither did I ... 'til I STFWed.