Every time Google changes its appearance for so-and-so’s birthday or for the anniversary of an important event, click on the image. It’s that simple. Don’t just scroll over the image; actually click on the image and read a little bit of the information provided. Let your curiosity drive you.
Just a few days ago, Google celebrated Robert Koch’s birthday. Who even is Robert Koch? A simple click would inform you that he was a German physician and microbiologist who is also known as the father of modern bacteriology. What is bacteriology? A simple search would tell you that it is the study of “the morphology, ecology, genetics, and biochemistry of bacteria.” From there, you might be curious to know how Robert Koch specifically contributed to bacteriology. You could then find out that one of his biggest accomplishments was finding the causative agents of bacterial infections such as anthrax and tuberculosis. Perhaps you had never heard of anthrax…
The search would continue until you had satisfied the questions popping out of your mind. This would take just 15 or 20 minutes out of your day, and you would go to bed knowing that much more about the world.
It’s not so much that we’re incapable of learning; it’s that we rarely satisfy our curiosity. We ask ourselves tens of questions each day, but we rarely take the time to seek answers to them. In a world where volumes of information can be found just at our fingertips, there really is no excuse to not be well-informed. Knowledge doesn’t make you smart. Being curious and feeding that curiosity does.
