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Internet Use Found To Affect Memory
An anonymous reader writes "The rise of Internet search engines has changed the way our brain remembers information, according to a new study out of Columbia University (abstract). 'We are reorganizing the way we remember things,' said the study's lead researcher. Because search engines like Google and Bing are so easily at hand, we feel less need to remember details that can be easily looked up. One possible upside: 'Perhaps those who teach in any context, be they college professors, doctors or business leaders, will become increasingly focused on imparting greater understanding of ideas and ways of thinking, and less focused on memorization. And perhaps those who learn will become less occupied with facts and more engaged in larger questions of understanding.'"
explaining the gory details of what we already know? Ok maybe for a general audience this is news, but for any tech minded person, I imagine this was already well understood.
I learnt to program before I had access to the internet, on a Dragon32 (TRS-80 clone), from one source of information: a single book. I remember re-reading a paragraph many many times over to squeeze a little more understanding out of it). I can _still_ remember the specific memory address you had to poke to squeeze a little extra performance out of the processor.
Now days (and I think we all know this or at least relate to it), I have the stuff I use frequently memorized, and anything else I relegate to “stuff I can just look up”.
Would also note that it isn’t just the internet (at least for programming). Auto-complete and intuitive naming also plays a big part in the lack of need to memorize stuff.
Never memorize what you can look up in books. --Albert_Einstein
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
No... because that should be in your Google calendar, and you'll receive a reminder when you visit it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Last summer I found a little herb shop in Phoenix, Arizona. One of their custom loose-leaf tea blends was called An Elephant Never Forgets. My memory had been rather fickle, ever since I lost it entirely for a 2-week period after I nearly drowned at the lake, some 12 years before. The lack of consistency was rather annoying, but only when I realized that there was something I couldn't quite remember.
I bought an ounce of said tea, and immediately noticed a dramatic improvement in my ability to remember. I don't take it all the time, or even regularly, but I did happen to see the bag this morning. Funny how that works.
Here are the ingredients from the above link, to save you all a click:
Huperzine-A, from the moss, also has potent memory-improving properties.
There are a lot of other important factors to memory improvement... I should look for a publisher. :)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
You can't "understand" things if you don't have the "facts"
The brain is also far superior than Google in combining facts into new understandings. Google cannot relate Moby Dick and Treasure Island together. You have to actually read the books to know what each are saying so that your brain can extrapolate the common themes.
The idea that having "stubs" of knowledge in the most powerful computer on the planet and leaving the real meat of facts in the dumbest computers on the planet is somehow a good thing is just idiotic. Google is not going to link information together for you. You have to put the real meat of information into your head and then only your brain is capable of making connections to create real understanding.
Work Safe Porn
Literacy changed the way how we remember things. Before that, we had to rely on oral tradition.
If you think that external tools weaken your brain and are bad for you, I suggest you try giving up reading and writing for a week. Not forever, just a week. No newspapers, just word of mouth. No jotting things down on post-it. No Sacred Shopping List for your Fallout Shelter.
--
BMO
ONE OF Einstein's colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. "You don't remember your own number?" the man asked, startled. "No," Einstein answered. "Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?" Einstein was waay ahead of his time.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
From my experience the internet does indeed create greater access to knowledge and facts, therefore making things like research much easier and making it unnecessary to remember trivial details that can easily be re-found. I think there is, though, a negative side to this abundance of information: a false equivalence among the different sources of information. How many times do you hear internet-users - and particularly, I would say, those who have grown up with the internet - stating as fact things they read in a blog, or an article from some unheard-of digital publication, and using that information to attempt to refute statements from a far more authoritative source? How often - here on Slashdot, for example - have you seen people refuse to believe something where another poster has cited a credible offline source, but accepting any link, no matter where from, as proof? How often do you see Wikipedia articles with footnotes that reference a page with no citations and no reputation as though the mere existence of a link somehow confirmed the point's veracity?
It's very easy, and in my experience very common, to treat the internet as a single source of knowledge, every fact that flows from which is equally credible and deserving of equal respect; this is perhaps helped by the anti-hierarchical bent of many internet users and online communities. This, I think, is something very strongly to be resisted. Hierarchy should be welcomed, provided it is won on merit. As an example, the authors who write the works of reference (offline) on a subject are selected because of their eminence and learning, and their writing is criticised by other respected experts in journals and other books. When we pretend that that filter is without value and that everyone's contribution is equally informative we put ourselves in the paradoxical position of having our learning hampered by an overabundance of information.
I was going to continue and give further examples and explanation but I don't want this to become overly lengthy and obscure my point: we should embrace the value of the internet - but we need also to be honest about its limitations. The online community is at present hostile to the idea of expert editorial control on online resources. They should not be (within reason). The internet can remove hierarchy and equalise everyone - but is that always desirable?
Never memorize what you can look up in books. --Albert_Einstein http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
I disliked history until I had a class in high school where a teacher went off curriculum and taught the class like a college class. No memorizing dates and such, they can be looked up in a reference, what we focused our time on was *why* that historic person made that particular decision at that time and place. What influenced or led to that decision? This is when history became interesting to me.
FWIW this was all pre-internet.
I assume you are referring to the studies that show anti-depressants are no better than placebo. This was discussed here some time back:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/08/02/26/107234/Antidepressants-Work-No-Better-Than-a-Placebo links to http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045
hth, HAND.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
All drugs have placebo effects (even the ones that actually have physiologically useful effects), so gomiam's statement was entirely meaningless. But because of the Slashdot Bias for "Corporate Science", he gets instant +1 insightful +1 funny.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com