The Externalization of Memory

"The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can “Google” the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves" (sciencemag.org/content/333/6043/776).


The externalization of memory is a topic that is constantly on my mind. Our ability to retain information is quickly diminishing, where we instead remember how to find something.
I saw a good study once where two test groups were being evaluated on memory retention. The first group was given a folder containing the names of different documents and were told the folder would be deleted. The second group was given the same folder with the same documents, but were told the folder would be left on the computer. They were then asked the contents of the folder without it in front of them. The first subject group was able to recall a much higher percentage of the documents in the folder. The second group was able to remember two or three file names out of the large amount of documents, but were unable to give the rest. When asked why they couldn't remember many document names, almost all gave the excuse that they remembered where the information was contained.

I see this inability to recall a piece of information in my life daily. I can remember where in a book, often to the page number, and the general idea on the page, but never the actual piece of information. This inability to retain information is problematic and beneficial in many ways. The problems are actually not new; people have relied on each other for many many years. It's common practice to talk to John because he is knowledgable about a specific politician rather than memorize everything about the politician. The information is used while it's useful then promptly forgotten. What is new, however, is the addition of the Internet and access to an overabundance of information at all times. As flawed humans we tend to take the easiest possible path. When there is little incentive to retaining information, it won't be. For better or worse, Google and other search engines are here to stay. They've sent out their crawlers and indexed a large amount of genuinely useful information. The problem comes from that information being accessible from virtually anywhere at any time. Having the information opens up a world of possibilities and a lot or problems. I suppose all we can do is be aware of our tendencies and compensate for them.


Image credit: http://ohefnawy334.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/google_brain.png