DO YOU remember life in that long-ago era before Google? The leading search engine has been around for what seems like ages now. How long? Oh, just Google it. It’s very easy to do and that’s one of the problems.

The other week, a writer was interviewed on BBC Radio Four about his new book. His selling-point argument was that the internet traps us in a modern paradox. A click or two on Google opens up fathomless caverns of knowledge, so all this information should be making us smarter. Yet the paradoxical bit is that the opposite seems to be happening. This vast catalogue of easily skimmed information is filling our heads with stuff-static, a sort of loud buzzing nothingness, or so the argument goes.

The name of the writer and his book escaped my scrawled-on memory, so I had to resort to Google. It turns out the writer is called Ian Leslie and his book is titled In Curious: The Desire To Know And Why Your Future Depends On It. Not sure why that slipped my mind.

I haven’t been curious enough to read his book yet. But the interesting part is that the writer argues there are two types of curiosity. “Diversive curiosity” is the Twitter-hopping variety, according to Mr Leslie. This aimless desire to know something or other is all too easily satisfied, and risks leaving us dumber than we used to be.

The other sort of inquisitiveness is known as “epistemic curiosity”. This is deeper and more disciplined: curiosity of the old school, if you like.

Perhaps there is something to his argument, although instantly being able to know who starred in what or used to be shacked up with whom is a pleasant diversion when watching television. Our 20-year-old daughter is always consulting the “G-Man”, as she puts it.

It’s rather lofty to maintain that idle curiosity will only make us more stupid, while the ‘proper’ sort will elevate our minds. Yet there is something in this. After all, in the past if we wished to discover something, we had to at the very least read a book. Now the answer can come in an instant, like a mental fast-food snack. Chomp, chomp and it’s gone.

Google has been getting itself in a tangle lately, following its attempts to follow the spirit of Europe’s new “right to be forgotten” law. This is a minefield for Google and, as it happens, offers another take on curiosity.

The European Court ruled that people can request to be removed from Google searches. This can happen even if the original article featuring them was true, fair and balanced. The qualifications are if the article is considered to be “outdated or irrelevant”.

Certain newspapers have already had stories erased by Google, including national titles and regional papers such as the Oxford Mail. The ‘deleted’ stories still exist on the newspaper’s website. Google cannot remove such a story, obviously, but it can delete it from its search listings.

So if someone asks for a story to be deleted from Google, their name will not come in a search. Or it won’t come up immediately. If John Smith of York, a public official, say, requests that an old story about a shoplifting offence be removed, Google will comply. Then a Google search for John Smith will not find the “offending” story. But a search for shoplifting might still uncover his past shame.

It’s all a bit of a swamp if you ask me. “Outdated and irrelevant” are subjective terms and local citizens might, for example, feel the right to be reminded that a public official in charge of spending taxpayers’ millions once had a shoplifting offence.

Newspapers already have to abide by legal restrictions in their reporting of past and present offences, which is fair enough. And sometimes what’s gone should be gone, otherwise there is no opportunity for a person to overcome their past mistakes.

But if the internet is going to be an effective research tool, then this sort of tinkering won’t help. Unless you only want to search for cats or dogs that look like Hitler. And even then, what if the cat complains?