Speak, Memory

Remember “The End of History?  Sigh. How quickly they forget.

We now we have The End of Memory. We forget more these days, but it’s okay. We’ve all out-sourced our long-term memories to search engines. That’s according to a new report by researchers from Harvard, Columbia and the University of Wisconsin:

“Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips,” Betsy Sparrow,Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner, Science (abstract)

Need a fact?  Can’t remember? Google it.

More (guess how we found these):

“Google rewiring the way we remember, study says,” Leslie Katz, CNET.com

“Minds like sieves,” Nick Carr, Rough Type

“Piece of Mind: Is the Internet Replacing Our Ability to Remember?” Larry Greenemeier, Scientific American

 “‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards’, the Queen remarked.” — Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), Through the Looking Glass

(Yes, the title of this post is from Nabokov. No, not Evgeni, Vladimir. Remember?)

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Tags: brain, cognitive Neuroscience, Google, memory, Nabokov, neuroscience, psychology, recall, research, search engines, thought, transactive memory, transitive memory, web