Google and Human Memory
A few days ago, a study called “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips” was published. It stated that the Internet has turned into a kind of “external memory” for our brains. The study was based on Google because it is the most popular search engine on the Internet. Google is so popular and indispensable that the term “to google” has now become a verb listed in modern dictionaries. Do you want to find out about something? Google it!
Since mobility is in vogue nowadays, more and more people are eager to have access to the Internet any time, anywhere. Mobility is really great; however, it also makes us lazy to memorize facts. It’s much easier now to go to Google and recover the information “on demand” with no need to store any information in our brains.
Everybody knows that technology makes our lives easier, more comfortable, and saves us time. On the other hand, we’ve become so dependent on the Internet that some people “freak out” if they cannot check their emails or Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Today, there is a whole series of services people believe they cannot live without. Also, in many cases, people keep lots of valuable information stored on the Internet in personal accounts or on some websites they use frequently to search for information.
After I read the article about the Google study, I realized I was in complete agreement with the author of this research because I’d been a victim of the same “Google” effect. Haven’t you?
For example, since we have Internet access at home, at the workplace and on our cell phones, whenever we need some information, the first thing we are likely to do is open a web browser, type www.google.com and search for what we want. It doesn’t matter if we’ve already looked for that information before because even if we have, we didn’t even consider memorizing it because we knew we could easily find it again.
Another good example — agendas. People usually keep their agendas on the Internet or in their cell phones because these tools will certainly remind them of appointments exactly at the appropriate time.
However, what happens if you have no Internet access? What if your phone’s battery has been drained? All of your “external memory” suddenly becomes unavailable, and you can’t do anything about it, unless you have a backup of all this data in your brain, which is unlikely these days.
Raul Hiromu Sumiya is a graduate in Computer Science and works as a Business Analyst. He can be contacted at: raul.sumiya@gmail.com
