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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.'"
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!
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.
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.
...and you're using yours to remember episodes of Married With Children?
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
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 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
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.