A recent study, Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips, by Betsy Sparrow of Colombia University has given some interesting insight on our relationship with knowledge and the computer.
If you want to know something, what do you do? You “Google” it. We all know where to find information now-a-days, and that is exactly what this study proves. It shows how we know where we can find information more than about the information itself. We locate information completely outside of ourselves, externally, with the help of the internet.
In the past, our transactive memory consisted only of other people. This means our external source of memory was other humans, and we were all a “group mind.” If you wanted to know something, you had to ask someone else. Now—however—we have a new friend called the internet; available at any instant to help us acquire its endless amount of stored information.
On the surface, this looks negative. We always think of the computer first when we want to find something out, and we don’t locate any information internally. So does that have an adverse effect on us?
Sparrow says not necessarily. She calls it “adaptive” and says it’s a change from memorizing facts to memorizing methods. Sparrow explains that the information we normally look up on the internet is not facts you use in your day-to-day life, so it’s not necessarily making us lazier or any less intelligent.
Sparrow did not intend for this study to be a critique of prevailing technology, but a helpful way to boost our development of knowledge by being able to further utilize the resources we have.
So are we breaking down or just evolving with the robots? Whaddyathink?
