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Gadgets Have Taken Over For Our Brains
skotte writes "According to a Trinity College survey released Friday, the boom in mobiles and portable devices that store reams of personal information has created a generation incapable of memorizing simple things. In effect, the study argues, these devices have replaced our long-term memory capabilities. 'As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall their home telephone number without resorting to their mobile phones or to notes. When it came to remembering important dates such as the birthdays of close family relatives, 87 per cent of those over the age of 50 could remember the details, compared with 40 per cent of those under the age of 30.'"
...but I forgot what it said.
Here, let me pull it up on my iPhone.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I've got no problem letting a device remind me when my mom's birthday is. That's what it's for.
Maybe we're forgetting al this stuff because
a) we know we don't need to remember it
b) we've displaced the storage space with the massive variety of passwords we need to remember these days
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
People can't multiply four digit numbers together in their heads anymore either. They don't have to. Einstein didn't know his phone number either, he said he could look it up. Who cares if you can't remember your Aunt Trudie's birthday? We have technology for these things.
It's important to remember that the brain can only retain so much. When overloaded, a new fact replaces an old one. Do you all forget the episode of Married With Children, when Kelly went on a sports trivia show? The only thing she knew before she prepared for it was that her dad scored four touchdowns in a single game. She crammed all sorts of knowledge into her head, and was totally kicking butt in the competition, until the final question. "What local hero scored four touchdowns in a single game?" She had forgotten.
It is important to realize that we have a limited number of brain cells. With technology, we can use fewer of them, and this is how it should be.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
These gadgets are doing exactly what they are supposed to: they are freeing us from the tedium of having to memorize and keep track of meaningless numbers, dates, and times. I don't see why that's a bad thing.
They have no problem remembering them - after all that's what they use the devices for. Functionally it's the same thing as carrying them in your head, but now you can use the neurons for other things.
This is only going to get more extreme over time, bring on the implants already.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I don't consider birthdays to be as important as my parents (and my parent's parents) do - so I don't bother trying to remember them.
If I know something is recorded somewhere else, I am less likely to remember it - why try to remember something that is easy to find?
No, I haven't rtfa, but what controls are in place to separate the conclusion of 'kids these days don't remember stuff good' and 'kids these days have different priorities'?
Sure...they can't remember their friends' phone numbers, but they memorize celebrities' hairstyles, dress, relationships, offspring, drama, and favorite brands of tampons?
Not enough sleep. The lack of sleep causes memory problems and insomnia is a growing sleep problem. I believe the average number of hours of sleep per night has been decreasing the last 50 years. Can't prove it. Although, look at the popularity of the latest sleep drugs.
Camping on quad since 1996.
"87 per cent of those over the age of 50 could remember the details, compared with 40 per cent of those under the age of 30"
Wow you mean the extra 20 years of repeating the same birthday dates helped them remember them, duh no surprises there really.
Don't worry - Once you've been out of school a little longer you'll realize that your generation doesn't suck significantly more than the rest of humanity.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Isn't this the issue really? A monolithic brain would be much faster in recollecting and using data. A microkernel brain (relying on gadgets for services) would have to deal with different gadgets to collect the same data and it would be use to access such devices. Not counting that different gadgets would not necessarily share data with each other (your laptop with your mp3 player, or with your PDA), immediately. So according to Linus, the old school of relying on a monolithic brain would probably be faster and probably more efficient, although a bit dirtier (misplaced wedding anniversaries, a known bug in the male population). After all it worked for centuries...
"Men came off worse than women. Only 55 per cent of men could remember their wedding anniversary, compared to 90 per cent of women."
There are a whole bunch of things in that article that are not necessarily
anything to do with the hypothesis. The above is just a particularly egregious
example. Apart from men not caring as much about relationships, how much thought
does an average man put into thinking about the wedding beforehand compared
to his spouse, 10% would be my estimate, but that's a little on the high side.
In the rest of it, so older people remember birthdays better than younger people,
maybe that's because they have been giving presents for longer etc
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Even though some things can be easily looked up in a book, having committed the facts to memory gives certain advantages that are not obtained by just having them in a book. Do you want your airplane pilot looking up what the trim settings, or throttle settings are on the plane when he is landing? Do you want your surgeon having to look up where the sciatic or femoral nerve is in the middle of your hip replacement?
The answer is no. The retained knowledge of facts allows for a more thorough understanding of the facts, and allows for easier manipulation. I see this all the time with idiot cashiers who can't make change, and have to look up what the correct change is for something that costs $19.27 after I give them $20.02.
Ir retort to Feynman - I could easily look up F=MA in a basic physics book, as opposed to cluttering my mind with that useless formula.
My arguments will obviously trigger a response in fans of the rote memorization vs those of the concepts(why learn adding - we have calculators). Probably swining too far in either direction is unwise, and a healthy balance between the two is beneficial in learning.
..........FULL STOP.
The ariticle is total bullsh... wait, what were we talking about again?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
No, I might not remember people's birthdays, simply because there's no need for it, my mobile phone tracks it. However I have no problems remembering 50+ passwords, 10+ PINs and usernames and security phrases. I want a study on how many above 50 do that?
The reality is that the human story is all about using tools and technology to free our minds for more abstract purposes. If we can have the facts written in front of us, we are more likely to be able to draw defensible and novel inferences based on those facts. But the lack of importance of memorization comes directly from the work technology, which is really a systematic telling of how to do something, rather than merely memorizing a myriad of facts.
The truly disturbing thing about this story is that much research into cognitive development indicates that memorization is the lowest level of thinking, yet in average daily life memorization is overly prized and most people likely never advance beyond it. Stories like this, likely written to convince the masses that undated skills is unreasonable as the arbitrary skills of the past are always the best, merely perpetuates the myth that thinking is nor required and technology is something that happens once, and then nothing is ever discovered again. I am always very tickled when people say how fast technology is moving. Do we not consider the steam engine of 200 years ago? Or the printing press of 500 years ago? Or how about the stirrup 2000 years ago? All of these were disruptive influences which reduced the necessity of human effort for survival. Each of these offloaded some of our human effort onto machines, both physical and mental. For instance, the Jacquard loom automated not only the act of weaving, but the need to remember to switch our fibers. I am sure that all the skilled weavers who were put out of jobs decried that such a machine would be the end of civilization as we know it. And it thankfully was. I am very happy to have indoor plumbing and not have to pour my feces into the street.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
According to a Alexandria School of Business survey released 4000 years ago, the boom in papyrus that store reams of business listings has created a generation incapable of memorizing simple things. In effect, the study argues, these devices have replaced our long-term memory capabilities. 'As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall the amount of items in their store without resorting to their papyrus scrolls. When it came to remembering important dates such as the birthdays of business associates, 87 per cent of those over the age of 50 could remember the details, compared with 40 per cent of those under the age of 30.'
(Our brains adapt to make the most efficient use of our tools. Who would have thought?)
...by those on both sides of the debate.
Those who would decry technology focus too much on (relatively) meaningless data: "these people who have no desire to remember X do not remember X, whereas in the past, we needed to remember X and we did!" and its ilk.
Those who would defend technology spend their time pointing out the obvious flaws in that argument.
Both sides ignore the important question: will this affect us in other ways?
There are many things I do not NEED to do, but I do them because they benefit me in other ways. I do not NEED to be able to run a mile, or perform pushups, or solve Rubik's Cube or a Crossword. However, I do them because in doing so, I prepare myself for things to come.
Likewise, many everyday activities benefit us in similar ways: kids don't walk to school anymore, but the argument "they don't have to, since we have cars" doesn't hold up - walking has benefits beyond getting us somewhere.
The question is, then, whether our memories ARE getting worse. Certainly we depend less on them for certain types of data. Whether we are replacing this practise with other forms of mental exercise is a more complicated issue: is our use of the cellphone and computer to recall this stuff good practice for using tech down the line? I'll bet those people who can't remember their phone number would score better than the oldies in a 'technology competency' test, on average.
In other words, the issue is, as usual, far more complicated than TFA would have you believe. The data they've used to draw their conclusion is LAUGHABLE, yes, but that doesn't mean their claim is false.
There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and nine other kinds of people.
sort of, in his short story The Feeling of Power.
"According to a Royal study released Friday, the boom in printing presses and and cheap books that store reams of information has created a generation incapable of memorizing simple things. In effect, the study argues, these devices have replaced our long-term memory capabilities. 'As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall the details of day's without resorting to the newspaper. When it came to remembering important dates such as the 's birthday or Scripture, 87 per cent of those over the age of 50 could remember the details, compared with 40 per cent of those under the age of 30.'"
-1613, London
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall their home telephone number without resorting to their mobile phones or to notes."
:)
The home telephone number is nowhere near as important any more, simply because everybody has their own cellphone. I know I hardly ever use my landline, so of course it's going to be harder to remember the number.
"When it came to remembering important dates such as the birthdays of close family relatives, 87 per cent of those over the age of 50 could remember the details, compared with 40 per cent of those under the age of 30.'"
Those over the age of 50 have had at least 20 years longer to burn it into their memory
A friend of mine once used his GPS handheld to fix the coordinates of the place he parked his car in an unknown city. At the end of the day he said "right, lets go back to the car" and pulled the GPS.. ahem.. actually he never put it down, and I doubt he actually saw much sights. Then his girlfriend said "I know where the car is! It's 5 blocks away from here". But he wouldn't trust her and we split - she said she would go straight to the car while we were waiting for a GPS fix. 20 mins latter we traced our way back to the car. His girfriend was already there - waiting for us :).
I'm pretty sure my gandma had a little book where she wrote down phone numbers, birthdays, etc.
No sig today...
Walkable communities, particularly those with decentralized mixed-use zoning, *are* associated with all sorts of social benefits, from lower incidence of several chronic diseases to higher rankings on self-reported happiness surveys. And, personal autos do contribute to a bunch of social problems: global warming, the geopolitical struggle for access to oil reserves, and personal injuries.
So, yeah, actually - it's sad that most of us use a car to drive to town. We'd be better off walking like they did in the old days.
But, not *because* they did it in the old days. On that point, I agree with you completely.
The problem isn't that people don't remember their friends' birthdays. The problem is that the article is using an obsolete and artificially restrictive definition of "remember."
A more appropriate question is, "are you able to access or be reminded of your friend's birthday whenever it would be useful?" When the date is bit of ink on page 73 of an address book, the only way you're likely to remember to say "happy birthday" is by lugging around redundant copies of that information in your brain. But, when the date is a entry in a calendar application (with appropriate backups), then by any functional definition, it has already been remembered. No need to bother saving another copy in your head.
"As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall their home telephone number without resorting to their mobile phones or to notes."
Maybe its because older people are still tied to land lines. They forgot the "I don't have a land line, jst a mobile, you ignorant clod!"
Anyway, to my point: Its like remembering your own postal code - why should I? I never write letters to myself, and I never mail anything any more. About the only thing I get in the mail are bills (hey - I pay them onine, but until they give me $ for saving them postage, paper and printing, let them keep sending them), junk mail, and some print IT trade magazines. If I need it, I can always look on my driver's license.
Better, at least for me, to remember the "break points" in the ASCII table - 65=A, 97=a, etc ...
We remember what's important to US, and forget the rest. Remembering a bunch of phone numbers is no longer important - we have gadgets to do that, same as some people in previous generations had servants to "sweat the small stuff."
Just remember to keep a hard copy of all those phone numbers, for when you lose your cell phone ...
Kevin Smith on Prince
I still think you're probably joking, but after reading so many of the other posts on this topic, it's no longer so obvious. The thing is that us "older folk" remembered phone numbers and birth dates when we were young folk, as well.
This is not without precedence. When books and writing became common place, a similar phenomenon happened. People used to routinely memorize very long stories in their entirety. If you do that today, it makes you a bit of a "freak show".
As others have mentioned, it does free us up to focus on other tasks. However, and perhaps this is because I'm part of the "over 30 crowd", I do feel like something precious is being lost.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Honestly, I don't see how it's a big deal that I have a hard time remembering my own phone number.
Practically speaking, it's irrelevant whether you do remember your phone number. I think the point of the study is that it would be alarming if all our devices made it such that people surrounded by such things (who do nothing to compensate) could not remember such things.
In other words, it's not about whether you actually remember a particular piece of information, but whether your overall ability to remember such things has been harmed by lack of use (atrophy). Current brain science suggests that the health of your brain (especially later in life) depends crucially on activity: it's not able to keep functioning unless it gets a certain kind of workout. It would not be surprising to find, correlatively, that if activities aimed at developing and maturing basic cognitive capacities in early life are lacking, those powers will not be as readily available later. That is scary.
Does that mean we should throw away cell phones? Make children memorize long lists of irrelevant items? Of course not. But we should promote the kinds of activities that help develop and maintain cognitive health. The devices and aids we have around do not make this impossible, but the danger is that they make it seem irrelevant. The attitude that people fall into spontaneously seems to be: "Why learn anything when you know (or think) you can get an adequate blast of information about it on Wikipedia?" One answer is "so your brain will work." (Other "answers" are less polite versions of "why are you so damn lazy?")
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
They are citing "after" effects without any "before" status. I only started using gadgets to assist in memorization tasks in the last 2-3 years. Prior to this time if I was asked my home phone I would know it, and now, I still know it. I know my work phone number too, which oddly enough, I have never known at any previous job or prior to my usage of PIM.
If they asked me birthdays of anyone, I would have trouble remembering. I remember about 5 birthdays, and even those I have trouble recalling at will. I don't know why, except that maybe I don't care. I think birthdays are silly things to celebrate except perhaps those of your own children.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of things I can recall by pulling out my smartphone are things I simply would not have known at all before. And there are no cases where something I would've known before is something I do not know now. I have never dialed my wife's cell phone number without the address book but I can recite it no problems, because I've watched the # pop up on the phone screen 10000 times.
And what the article is ignoring, at least in my case, is that some information I actually remember better because of the time I took to acquire it and record it in my database. I felt it would be useful and since I didn't have to try and memorize it, I'd actually save it instead of the usual ignorance of the information. And the result is that I've memorized some of that info on accident. Darn.
Finally, I wonder why, if these effects were real, they would be considered ill? Humans are creatures who define themselves over time through technology. We cannot continue denying that the tech we invent and use to live is not part of our species domain of evolution. As technology becomes more prevalent it becomes part of ourselves. If we have opened our mind for more important tasks by reducing what it must contain by moving that information into portable devices, or highly accessible central databases, then we have evolved as a species. Currently there are "holes" in this plan but as we move forward they will be plugged. Someday when you find yourself stranded in a forest for some reason, you'll be able to subvocalize a request for a map to be projected into your visual cortex and send a request for assistance to the nearest forestry service through satellite links. When this happens, who will care if you could or could not memorize uncle Jim's anniversary?
What will it matter when in your satiating state of serenity you are reminded subconsciously that you decided that you cared about someone's going away party to which you were invited 9 months earlier.
I guess what I'm saying is, let the gadgets take over our menial mental tasks. Let us follow up on the technology to fix its critical flaws so that we can rely on it. Let our minds work on the immediate projects that are of the most importance and leave this obnoxious set of tasks to the domesticated wafers of silicon that we have created.
The fear that this technology will weaken our minds is as irrelevant as the fear that wearing shoes will weaken our feet.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Let us start with an Egyptian story, even though one told by a Greek. According to Plato in Phaedrus when Hermes, or Theut, the alleged inventor of writing, presented his invention to the Pharaoh Thamus, the Pharaoh praised such an unheard of technique supposed to allow human beings to remember what they would otherwise forget. But Thamus was not completely happy. "My skillful Theut," he said, "memory is a great gift that ought to be kept alive by continuous training. With your invention people will no longer be obliged to train their memory. They will remember things not because of an internal effort, but by mere virtue of an external device."
Yep. Even Plato was discussing such issues, with regards to the invention of writing. We'll lose some skills which are less important, and replace them with others. That's how it goes.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban