In a Slate article titled “Is Google Wrecking Our Memory?” author Clive Thompson dispels the belief that the internet is negatively limiting our mental capacity for remembering things. Instead, he argues that we have always had terrible memories and compares internet search engines to people. That is, before the internet, we relied more on transactive memory or “the art of storing information in the people around us.”
As humans, we have always depended upon external devices to help us recall information whether it is in the form of a book or Post-it notes. However, when it comes to recovering memories swiftly, we “rely on something much more immediate: other people.” Once we can gauge what areas another person’s memories are strongest/weakest in, we can then divide up memory tasks – if we know that the other individual is better at remembering birthdays, we instead focus our own efforts on memorizing something else such as sports statistics. We are virtually treating others like we would an encyclopedia, although people can be more efficient in terms of quicker response times. Working with others to remember something can also result in “cross-cuing” where ideas are bounced off one another until something jolts someone’s memory and the correct answer is landed upon. We “share the work of remembering… because it makes us collectively smarter.”
Now, we also use Google and other online devices for the same purpose of memory recall as we once did with other people. But because we know that we can rely on the internet to remember facts for us, there is a smaller chance that we will try to remember it ourselves. However, this does not mean that our mental competence is diminishing. We have always stored a lot of what we “know” in others, but “we rarely recognize this because, well, we prefer our false self-image as isolated, Cartesian brains.” But the truth of the matter is that we all “think and remember socially.”
Personally, I love Google. But I admit that I probably rely on it too much. I agree with the author in that I don’t think using the internet to remember things is detrimental to our memory capacity, but I do think that using Google leads me to give up much more easily in trying to remember things that I know I could recall if I just thought about it a little bit longer or a little bit harder. However, knowing that the answers are so easily and quickly available on the internet is much too enticing. In the end, people (myself included) don’t want to suffer through the discomfort or anxiety of not being able to recall something so they instead turn to the internet in hopes of receiving instant gratification. I don’t think we appreciate the struggle of trying to recall things on our own anymore. Or perhaps we’ve all become much too lazy.