Read an article in wired today about our memories being ‘outsourced’ to technology, something I have surely found true in my life. I’m concerned at the *lack* of concern in the article. What do you think?
———–the first snip, rest at link above——–
We’re running out of memory.
I don’t mean computer memory. That stuff’s half-price at Costco these days. No, I’m talking about human memory,
stored by the gray matter inside our heads. According to recent
research, we’re remembering fewer and fewer basic facts these days.
This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people
and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to
recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to
tell them a relative’s birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age
50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could
do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third
of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to
look it up.
That reflexive gesture — reaching into your pocket for the
answer — tells the story in a nutshell. Mobile phones can store 500
numbers in their memory, so why would you bother trying to cram the
same info into your own memory? Younger Americans today are the first
generation to grow up with go-everywhere gadgets and services that
exist specifically to remember things so that we don’t have to:
BlackBerrys, phones, thumb drives, Gmail.
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Technorati Tags: skeptech, geekingoutloud, wired, wiredmagazine, memory
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