Totaled Recall: How technology is ruining our brains

Information overload is a mater of discipline. If you let yourself be enveloped in random facts you'll eventually become a little scattered.

This isn't really a new concept. In the first Sherlock Holmes story (A Study in Scarlet published in 1887) Watson mentions to Holmes that the Earth revolves around the Sun and is shocked to find Holmes doesn't know that. Holmes' response is that not only did he not know it but that he'll try his best to forget it now that he's been told because it does not serve any practical purpose for him.

Clearly that's a little too extreme but the lesson is there. The argument of how humanity's increasing knowledge is become detrimental has been on people's minds for a long time. Easy access to that knowledge just exacerbates the problem. Yet society hasn't collapsed and I don't think our brains are going to rot anytime soon.

The trick is just realizing your brain has finite resources and it probably isn't best to get to bogged down in minutia.

I really don't like these titles, because they come off as authoritative -- as in a scientific study was done -- only for people to follow the link to end up reading some guy's thoughts on technology and memory because he forgot something.

Gah, this piece is fluff. I don't have a pile of poems memorized, I'll admit that. I don't have phone numbers memorized either. What I do have tho, is a very broad knowledge. I know enough about a lot of things to effectively search, and i can retain lots of stuff, I just don't do the details. Does this mean I am not as capable of coming up with something new, or that Im not as capable of coming up with something new in the same old ways? Because I have access to top-shelf knowledge of many fields, I can put ideas together that would have remained separate for lifetimes in previous generations, or is this synthesis different from some "one true creativity"?

Perhaps it is ruining yours, but then a little discipline helps. I have multiple pda and cellphones and a hp200lx. Believe it or not, the hp200lx can enter a todo item quicker than any other method, including pencil and paper, berry, pda, whatever.

It is a little bulky, so i always carry a small notepad (like a daytimer) (yes, I know, retro) and a pen, and it is very useful that way.

I also particularly agree with TomOfTTB's comment above.

At work in the past few weeks, I've been expected to document some parts of a large system I've been designing, so that other people can use it. I've now produced tens upon tens of pages of documentation, which still only scratch the surface and have massive gaping holes, some by design, some by sheer necessity. Meanwhile, this stuff is just basic state I need in my head to do what I'm doing, it's not even a full explanation of what's going on; even the code is only covering the what and for a third party to extract the "why" could take a long time.

When it's all in my head, it doesn't seem too large, until I try to get it out on paper and I find that it's a simply huge amount of state.

I'm not feeling too guilty about not having Shakespeare memorized. I've got a lot of things going on in my head that very few people of past eras had to contend with. Sure, if I didn't have a job and didn't care about world news and didn't sometimes do my own writing and have programming projects on the side, I'd be left with tons more time to memorize poetry. But... so what?

Technology is not actually ruining our brains but perhaps there is too much information entering our brains now, compared to 20-30 years ago. Perhaps our brains are re-prioritizing what needs to be remembered and what not.

I personally code without using any reference/cheat sheets (not in Erhlang ;) ) , but for the life of me I can never remember my mobile number!

Personally, I do not consider writing to be: "the closest we have come (so far!) to perfecting the human interface." In fact, I tend to do it only when there are no other practical options.

I can type far faster than I can write, find it far more natural, and it has numerous advantages. For instance, I can share it more broadly, reproduce it more easily, archive more effectively, search through it more easily, and worry about losing it less (largely because of that archiving and searching).

Even in his particular example, it seems that if he had spent less time trying to decide which of his bells and whistles to use and just picked and used any of them he would have had no problem. (In his situation, I would have left myself a voice note on the phone. If you are used to it, you can do it while walking with very little slowdown.)

It all comes down to correct utilization of technology. If you want to recall something, then memorize it - it`s not a difficult task. If you simply record it via chosen medium AND you wish to recall it at a later date, then you're doing it wrong. I think it just comes down to common sense..if I need to call a number once, I won't memorize it..it`s a waste of time. However, I am more than likely to memorize a friends number who I call often.

Personally, I can recall old passwords, tons of current passwords, tons of phone numbers, student ids, credit card numbers, bank account numbers and tons of relevent IP addresses I use frequently..come to think of it, I have a lot of things stored in my head. How can the author assert that our ancestors remembered more than us? Heck, do we not recall THOUSANDS of domain names?

"People who want to appear clever rely on memory, people who want to get things done write things down."

I haven't been able to find it again, so I'm not certain, but I think it was from the Lairds' 1947 book http://www.amazon.com/Technique-Getting-Things-Directing-Lea... which I reviewed on Amazon:

This is a very useful book on getting things done. If you need hand-holding and specific techniques you can apply without thinking too much it's not for you. It gives few specific techniques, instead it focuses on general methods applicable to almost anything and on many inspirational anecdotes. Very readable.

The big difference is in HOW MUCH we need to remember. There simply wasn't that much new information to remember Before Writing. An expert story teller in ancient times probably didn't remember more than a few novels worth of information - far less than I take in in a month - over his lifetime. Others had even less, and most of what they took in was gradual changes in the surrounding environment, not a lot of explicit information (like, to use the original essay's example, telephone numbers; and we don't remember as many phone numbers today as 30 years ago because we're not dialing as many).

Technology isn't hurting our brains. It's evolving them to deal with a different set of problems.