Understated Ur-Drakon Callie Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Link So would you agree or disagree that search engines like Google affect your memory? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 I can't remember. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 I know I remember plenty of things without resorting to Google, but I think there are also things that I just look up as I need them. And sometimes I'll remember something but look it up anyway just to double-check. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Triumph Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 I wonder if anyone produced similar reports back when writing was invented. "We'll lose our capacity to memorize things! Oral transmission of information will decline because of this new-fangled writing! People will think they can write stuff and then they won't have to remember it! Writing rots your brain!!!! Oral traditions for the win." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Sarachim Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Originally Posted By: Triumph I wonder if anyone produced similar reports back when writing was invented. "We'll lose our capacity to memorize things! Oral transmission of information will decline because of this new-fangled writing! People will think they can write stuff and then they won't have to remember it! Writing rots your brain!!!! Oral traditions for the win." In fairness, they were right. When was the last time you heard someone recite the Iliad from memory? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 I wasn't surprised. I know I deliberately don't commit things to memory if I know I'll have access to them later. The internet is my exocortex. —Alorael, who just can't wait until he can have his brain and the collective conscious physically integrated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Student of Trinity Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Yeah, I'm pretty sure Gutenberg destroyed the human mind in his day. Making books available to people who had previously had no access to books at all may have been the least of what printing did. Somewhere I once read this, and at the time it impressed me as reliable, or at least plausible: until books became easily available, even those educated few who did have access to books had to memorize them when they read them. Memorizing a book was much easier than writing a whole new copy, and so human memory was the (comparatively) mass channel, with physical books being carefully guarded master versions. The consequence of this was that being a learned person meant that you had memorized a large number of texts. That was the explicit goal of education. On the one hand this is a tremendous intellectual feat, which quickly died out once any idiot could simply flip pages. On the other hand, reverence for past genius and reluctance to criticize it is essentially built in to the system. How can you decide a text is crap, if you have it memorized? It's part of your mind, for better or worse. After printing this changed, I believe. Remembering every word of a text became utterly irrelevant; as long as you had a rough idea of what kinds of things had been written where, you could just go and look them up. As books proliferated, this kind of learning only became more important. But now this kind of learning is fading in its turn, and that may be a bigger change than the more obvious fact that information is today taking another giant leap in accessibility. It's enough now to faintly recall that somebody once said something, for Google to turn it up in a jiffy. I don't have to know whether it was said by Immanuel Kant, or Karl Marx — or Groucho Marx. I have seen the shape of the future, and it is mashed up. Whatever fits together, will fit together; and what else matters? I find it hard to see a downside to this. Supposedly Albert Einstein once let slip that he didn't know the speed of sound, but when reproached for this ignorance, he just said he was sure it was a simple fact, and that if he ever needed to know it, he would be able to look it up. Well, it's even easier now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Goldengirl Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Originally Posted By: Excalibur Link So would you agree or disagree that search engines like Google affect your memory? Definitely. In fact, this whole writing thing has just been draining our memories from us just as surely as a Pensieve. We should go back to the days where there was no writing for the commoners, and no printing for anyone. Everything had to be scribed, if it was going to be written at all. Yeah, back in the good days where people had to memorize epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Dantius Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Originally Posted By: Triumph I wonder if anyone produced similar reports back when writing was invented. "We'll lose our capacity to memorize things! Oral transmission of information will decline because of this new-fangled writing! People will think they can write stuff and then they won't have to remember it! Writing rots your brain!!!! Oral traditions for the win." Yeah, I think Socrates said something to that effect. Let me google it... aha, here it is: Originally Posted By: Socrates [Writing] destroys memory and weakens the mind, relieving it of work that makes it strong. It is an inhuman thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Aoslare Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 That's a bit out of context. Socrates' main complaint about writing was that it could be manipulated and abused, and lead to the idolatry of mistaking data for meaningful knowledge. I'd say he was right on the money on those counts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 In pre-Google and cell phone days, my roommate only remember our home phone number. His work number was on a business card in his pocket, and for all other numbers he would call home and ask me to look it up in his phone directory. No need to waste memory space for non-essential information like his girl friend's number. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Student of Trinity Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Heh. I didn't know that quote at all, so I couldn't Google it. It turns out to be part of a long and famous discussion with some kid named Phaedrus. At least, I think it must be. So far I've found a fair amount of statements along these lines in Phaedrus, but not this exact quote. Socrates's objection to writing seems to boil down to the point that it isn't interactive. But the dialog with Phaedrus is itself an unabashed literary production that doesn't even purport to be notes taken by a third party from an actual discussion. Not sure what Plato was trying to do here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyshakk Koan Skwish-E Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES ... Socrates' main complaint about writing was that it could be manipulated and abused, and lead to the idolatry of mistaking data for meaningful knowledge ... Good thing the Internet can't be manipulated or abused that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast The Mystic Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 Originally Posted By: Excalibur So would you agree or disagree that search engines like Google affect your memory? How could Google possibly affect my memory? My memory is perfectly...Wait, was I saying something? Originally Posted By: Skwish-E Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES ... Socrates' main complaint about writing was that it could be manipulated and abused, and lead to the idolatry of mistaking data for meaningful knowledge ... Good thing the Internet can't be manipulated or abused that way. Ummm...Sure it isn't. I'll let you go on thinking that, at least for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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