RE: How the excessive daily use of Internet could affect your memory
Very interesting. I believe all of the above is true, however I don't believe it's a bad thing and I also don't believe it's making us stupid.
I believe this is simply a symptom of evolution. Consciousness rises and brings forth new technologies. Just because we can't remember the phone numbers of our closest friends, doesn't mean we've become stupid, but that we allocate our resources more efficiently.
Why should we allocate precious brainpower for things we can now outsource? Why should we memorize facts that we can look up based on need? That would be stupid ;)
As consciousness rises, our focus changes and we can all shift a little more from left brain to right brain and instead of remembering separate data (knowledge), we can now focus on how all these data are interconnected (wisdom) and we can also focus on connecting with others, on empathy, beauty, joy, etc. - all the right brain stuff that was a bit neglected so far.
Google is our servant, not our master. (At least when it comes to the topic of your article. I know there are many things about Google that are debatable ;))
Hey, thanks for your long reply and interest in the topic. I agree with you at some point. Yes, Google offers us the next step to evolution and collective consciousness. However we must keep in mind the harm it could do to us as well, if we abuse it and don't train our memory from time to time :))
P.S. I am a "victim" of this kind of abuse (I offload a lot of info not only by using the web, but thats another thing), so I wanted to talk about the topic.
I have to say to say I'm more in agreement with connecteconomy, dysfunctional, though I did find the article interesting. With technological advances occurring at ever-faster rates, humankind has to be more empowered, with benefits far outweighing costs, I'd say. Our brains are plastic and will adapt, just as we will, culturally. If our memories suffer, so be it. We now have incredible information resources (some better than others, obviously) at our fingertips, when we pull out our smartphones. I don't actually possess a smartphone but almost certainly would if I didn't find touch-typing therapeutic.
Obviously, it's not a great idea to be overdependent on technology and I certainly don't advocate thrusting smartphones into toddlers' hands (though I've heard some do and rave about the subsequent development of their children). So maybe, like how children need to have a runaround in the park occasionally to prevent obesity / promote social skill development, we ought to step away from keyboards on occasion and embrace other things for work / recreation. It's a balancing act, isn't it? Hopefully, most people with common sense can avoid over-reliance on / abusing the Internet / google with those who can't probably being the kind of persons who'd have sat transfixed to a TV set half a century ago.
I think where today's addictions differ from yesteryear's (ie. tv sets) is that computers provide more opportunities for interaction and the educational resources are vastly more numerous / better quality, also. I've lived half my life without a TV set, happily. I can't envisage giving up on laptops, though.
Thank you for your comment. The "cognitive offload" phenomenon did not start and will not end with Google, as you said - different times, different addictions.