Is the Internet Ruining Your Memory?

Is the Internet Ruining Your Memory?

1. What Socrates thought about the new technology at those times?

   • Socrates disliked this new technology called “writing”, because he thought that the orators of his time delivered great, memorized speeches without notes. He saw writing as a threat to that tradition, and by extension, those mental faculties.

2. The “Google Effect”

   • The “Google Effect” refers to the supposed impact of Internet search engines on our memory. According to experiments at Harvard University: the subject exposed to detailed, trivial information were more likely to forget it, if told they could look it up online later. And they tend to include the Internet among their own cognitive tools. It's like a computer was connected to their brains.

3. The exposure to detailed and trivial information

   • The subjects they use in the experiment they were exposed to detailed, trivial information were more likely to forget it if they told they could look it up online later. And they were tended to include the Internet among their own cognitive tools. Sparrow concluded, the Internet has become a central player in our “transactive memory”.

4. “Transactive memory”

   • Transactive memory refers to the sharing of information retention among persons—or in this case, digital networks— in a group. Sparrow express that this may havefarreaching effects on the way we think, and perhpas even the pshysiology of our brains.

5. Sparrow conclusion regarding Google

   • “In short, Google has become everyone's brainy friend, the “walking encyclopedia.” This can cause in the way we think, and even other things. Google is everywhere and in everything, is like our library of information.

6. Google's significant flaws

   • 1. First, the questionable validity of the assumption that forgetting something because we can google it later is any different from forgetting a phone number immediately after writing it down.
     • 2. Second, a study showed frequent Internet users were adept at remembering where to find information, if not the information itself.

7. Cognitive neuroscience reveals about the Internet

   • So far, cognitive neuroscience has revealed no such data.

8. Plasticity and affects on the human brain

   • Plasticity refers to the ability or capacity to alter our memories each time we access them. This can affect our brains because we will forget a lot of information that is easy to us to remember it.