“Peter Suderman…argues that…’it’s no longer terribly efficient to use our brains to store information.’ Memory, he says, should now function like a simple index, pointing us to places on the Web where we can locate the information we need at the moment we need it….
Don Tapscott, the technology writer, puts it more bluntly. Now that we can look up anything ‘with a click on Google,’ he says, ‘memorizing long passages or historical facts’ is obsolete. Memorization is ‘a waste of time.'”
~Nicholas Carr The Shallows
Memorization is a waste of time, Tapscott suggests.
I understand where Tapscott is coming from.
If memorization is merely a means by which information is stored for future recall, information can be stored much more easily, with much less work, online.
Why memorize sports stats if I can just look them up online whenever I need them? Why memorize the dates of friend’s birthdays when Facebook can remind me on the day?
“[Clive Thompson] suggest that ‘by offloading data onto silicon, we free our own gray matter for more germanely ‘human’ tasks like brainstorming and daydreaming.'”
~Nicholas Carr The Shallows
It’s a nice idea. Let the computers do the dreary work of memorizing. Let’s stick to the parts that make humans unique. The stuff that can’t be outsourced.
Thompson lists brainstorming and daydreaming as more “germanely” (fittingly, appropriately) human tasks than the task of memory.
In a way, he’s right.
We can outsource “memory” (the storage of facts) to computers–but we cannot outsource brainstorming or daydreaming.
As such, brainstorming and daydreaming are more germanely human than memory.
But he fails to mention what I think is an even more germanely human task–the task of thinking.
Humans are unique among created beings in that they have a mind in addition to just a brain.
Humans can think. They can sort through stored information. They can make new connections between information. They can discover new applications of information. And they can be transformed as they think through information.
You can memorize without thinking. Computers do that.
But I don’t know that you can think without memory.
Thinking. It’s an integral part of the Imago Dei.
And memory is an integral part of thinking.
That’s why I disagree with the above commentators.
We can’t outsource memory–because if we do so, we lessen our ability to think. And in doing so, we lose an essential part of what it means to be human.
That’s one thing we can’t outsource.
Don’t forget to take a look at Barbara H’s meme “The Week in Words”, where bloggers collect quotes they’ve read throughout the week.