by andypowe11
Study: why bother to remember when you can just use Google?
[Via Ars Technica]
In the age of Google and Wikipedia, an almost unlimited amount of information is available at our fingertips, and with the rise of smartphones, many of us have nonstop access. The potential to find almost any piece of information in seconds is beneficial, but is this ability actually negatively impacting our memory? The authors of a paper that is being released by Science Express describe four experiments testing this. Based on their results, people are recalling information less, and instead can remember where to find the information they have forgotten.
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This may actually be more efficient – remembering how and where to find the information rather than the information itself.
Our memories are imperfect and can lead us astray. But if we remember where the information is stored, we can retrieve that easily and, in a digital world, the copy we retrieve is as accurate now as it was when we first stored it.
Using memory as an index may actually allow us to more rapidly find a much larger set of information than pre-computer.
I know that personally, it has often been easier to remember how to derive say the quadratic equation than to remember the equation itself.
The downside to this is that we expect to be continuously connected. Having and index but no connection could hamper our abilities.
I seldom memorize phone numbers or addresses anymore, as I can easily retrieve them from my contact list.
And I use searches on my email all the time to retrieve information instead of memorizing it.
Perhaps this would have a downside if I become disconnected from my information sources. xkcd, as always, has an example:
(h/t to baritz)
So, there will be a use for some people who hold the trivia we need – the ones best at Jeopardy – but the ability to rapidly access the needed information through digital approaches may well become the default approach for most people.
