Miscarrying Google Brains

Google is changing your brain, study says, and don't you forget it

According to that link thing above (you click on it  =D, people fail to get enthused so I shall randomly try to surprise you with it and thus enthusiasm will ensue...did that almost sound repetitive?) there's a study by Betsy Sparrow that states, "We're still capable of remembering things that matter -- and are not easily found online" but that we don't remember as much as we used to because we can just go find it. The article goes on


about (yes I randomly went to a new line because I have enter powers) how we feel as though we don't have to remember information any more because it is at our fingertips but that we remember where to find the information. So instead we become robots only in the sense that we know where information is instead of memorize it. 


We have not yet taken the full switch to actually turning into our computers. "We're not thoughtless empty-headed people who don't have memories anymore," Sparrow said. "But we are becoming particularly adept at remembering where to go find things. And that's kind of amazing."   The article notes near the endish that we are treating the internet as the mother that memorizes birthdays so we don't have to, that we are allowing the internet to keep the information we feel is available to us and thus don't keep it ourselves.


I have actually noticed myself do this before is the thing, whenever I have a thought my mind will be jumping and poking at me to write it down/ touch it into my iphone notepad. And right when I do it breathes relief and goes away. I couldn't rewrite the note if I wanted to because my brain took it out.


What are your thoughts on all this? Does it matter if we memorize dates and can that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492? According to the article, "In fact, a wired life may actually open up more creative things to do with our brain, the team said. Psychologists have long known that it is easier to grasp an abstract concept when the brain is not fixated on memorizing facts" (2). 


Yet then there's always the horrendous fear that the internet could die, the world would suffer from everyone feeling like they had a miscarriage. 


Also, is there a need to memorize things such as the first chapter to The Fountainhead just so our minds can hold such an epic paragraph and feel it with each sound. Or has memorization been ruining our favorite moments, repetition making us despise even the name?