NEW YORK: Out of more than 1000 Americans surveyed for a report from cyber-security Company Kaspersky Lab released this week, more than half said they couldn’t recall the phone numbers of their friends and neighbours. And 44 per cent said they couldn’t remember their siblings’ numbers.
But why would they? What’s the point of filling your head with phone numbers if they’re all stored in a smartphone that’s with you almost all the time?
So instead, we’re replacing the ability to recall specifics with the certainty that we have them stored somewhere or can look them up online later a sort of digital amnesia. In fact, more than 90 per cent of those surveyed for the report agreed that “they use the internet as an online extension of their brain”.
Of course, this isn’t just about phone numbers. Rote memorisation was once a staple of modern education. Students were taught the names of prime ministers in order or even to draw a map from memory.
But now, that information is just a click or swipe away. And that’s making us worse at remembering things, according to academic research on the topic.
One journal article, published in Science in 2011, found that when people expect to have access to information online they are less likely to remember the actual facts, but more likely to remember how to find them.
In effect, we are already becoming one with the machine: “We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found,” according to the Science article.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing maybe it gives us more mental processing power to think through things. And we certainly have access to more knowledge now than ever, even if it’s not all stored in our brains.
But there are risks to this brave new world of memory outsourcing beyond losing our ability to recall who the 15th prime minister was.
That kind of information may always be a click away, but the important things the personal things, like way your mum smiled at your wedding you want to remember might be harder to recall or find online. And if you’re relying on your own archive of pictures or documents to keep track of those memories, the consequences of a lost, stolen, or hacked hard drive are much more meaningful.
