I have long believed that the mind is not to be found between the ears, but rather in the sum of our interactions with our environment. In a sense, we are what we do and who we know (so be careful what you do and who you know).
Technology extends and expands our reach, and therefore our minds. Tools shape the user. Marshall McLuhan famously said the media are an extension of our central nervous systems.
As we plug into the Internet, we no longer have to know facts, as facts are easily retrievable. How many feet in a mile? Einstein didn't bother remembering; he would look it up. Google now tells us: "feet per mile" instantly answers "1 mile = 5 280 feet." How many dollars is 1,645 baht? What is masala thosai?
The Telegraph reports on a British study claiming that technology is dumbing down the nation's brain power, and that "As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall their home telephone number without resorting to their mobile phones or to notes. "
Well, I'm not under 30 and I have that "problem." My phone lets me point and click and I'm perfectly happy with that. I have no desire to fill my head with phone numbers any more than I want to learn IP addresses, other than "there's no place like 127.0.0.1."
I don't believe technology is subtracting from our ability to remember. I think it's radically adding to our ability to know, and the important application of our brainpower is not in the direction of memory, but of understanding.
Comments
The old "technology makes us stupid" argument
This argument is literally ancient: Plato tells the story (in the Phaedrus) of the Egyptian god Thoth, the inventor of writing, who came to the Pharaoh with his great gift. But the Pharaoh was not overjoyed. He told Thoth that memory is of tremendous value to humans, and this new invention would make humans stupid and forgetful. They would lose their great skills of memory and thus become ignorant and poorer, intellectually, as a result of writing and reading.
The obvious counterargument
The obvious counterargument is that there are some things we need to be able to remember in the case that technology fails - like how to survive without technology. Is forgetting that information a worry?
Return to the past
We're just using technology to get back to the more comfortable place before technology forced this inconvenience on us.
In the old days (before my time, so I assume this happened), you picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect you with "John Doe". Automation meant that you now had to learn a string of numbers to reach the same person. We have to work around the technology; I really wish I hadn't given up my 612-384-ROCK cell phone number a few years ago. At least that was four fewer numbers for people to remember.
We still run into this with things like local search and maps. Programmers too often do things that are convenient for computers, not humans.
When was the last time you said to a friend "let's have dinner in 20006 tonight?" or "to get to my house, drive 0.3 miles on Main St., make a right, then drive 0.9 miles on Spruce St."