Evidence Suggests That The Internet Changes How We Remember

Technology Review’s Kenrick Vezina reports that according to a new study led by Betsy Sparrow, assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University, the tsunami of information available online with just a few mouse clicks and finger-taps may be subtly changing the way we retain information, but that doesn’t mean we’re becoming less mentally agile or thoughtful, but rather that the change can be seen as a natural extension of the way we already rely upon social memory aids like a friend who knows a particular subject inside out, as opposed to contentions that the constant assault of tweets and YouTube videos might be making us more distracted and less thoughtful – in short, dumber. However, so far there is little empirical evidence of the Internet’s effects, particularly on memory.

Interesting topic, and your editor is definitely much more Internet-dependent for research and project development than I was 20+ years ago pursuing journalism and book authorship using traditional methods like looking stuff up in books and clippings, and spending what now seems like an amazing amount of time just thinking. I’m certainly more productive and prolific volume-wise than I was then, and aspects like technical fact-checking have been vastly speeded up and improved, but I also have a lot less free time, and the stimulative nature the drinking-from-a-firehose information onslaught (plus its manifold distractions) make me wonder if the quality of my thinking hasn’t suffered.

For the full report visit here:
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38032/?p1=A1&a=f