this is the rundown o'hara srinivasan if you've ever notice that you don't bother remembering
things that you can find on the internet you are a low and there's a
new study of the journal science the delves into back in much more the title
of the paper is called google a fax on memory cognitive consequences of having information
at our fingertips
which were badly off their batteries parapsychology from columbia university actually with us and so
what are the kind of key findings you're essentially telling me that
i am able to take the space where used to remember things and now i'm
remembering how to find the information better
the overall findings are that when people don't know that
don't know things they tend to think about the computer first i think about the
place to find it
when people expect to have information accessible to them later they don't remember it is
well is one they don't expect to so they do located externally instead of internally
and then finally yes that people tend to prioritise where the findings as opposed to
the things themselves
which actually i think is pretty adaptive
so what kinds of information are we essentially keeping on the internet and not keeping
in our brains anymore
my guess is mostly the information that we don't have to use an outdated a
lives the things that we are experts in so the things that we aren't be
transacted memory source for other people
so what is transacted memory so transacted memory of this idea that we have an
external memory systems that are available to us and it typically are historically they were
describe just other people
so there be other people in our lives say in our office
or are home life with no specific things
it's we would go to them when we needed to know the interest of those
things but we wouldn't bother to encode the information internally
we would just know what they knew and no to go to them to find
out
so you know people been complaining about this idea ever since we have the written
word i mean they're a philosopher saying my gosh we're gonna forget everything in the
oral tradition is words that we really need to remember this is this kind of
that next evolution or we essentially taking or memories and putting them outside of our
brains not memories as a but huge chunks of our brain and putting them outside
i don't i don't think so necessarily i think you know that there may be
more information that we look up quickly online when we could often times you know
go back and insider all memories to find it we're just you know in a
hurry
so the stuff is still there is just were not accessing it as much as
we use two
and i also think it's not all that different from the transacted memory sources that
we've always used
it's just more salient the people that we're using it this way
so people don't really think about the other people in their lives of their using
you know with external memory sources but the computer is really you know everyone realises
that they're doing this you know resonates with everybody so it's it seems that much
more
i guess scary in some ways you know that the idea that where
locating everything that we learn outside of ourselves and so does that have any
kind of impact on our ability to remember things in general
i don't think that the case but i'd actually don't have date on that
i least with this question it if we're using this transacted memory online so much
what happens on those moments one where not connected to the internet do we
just get dumber
i well i guess that it depends it depends on how much you want to
know the answer to the question right so they did something that's really crucial to
something you're doing at the time you'll find some other way
right you'll call up the person might know you'll you know you'll actually track over
to the library to look up the information i mean if it really depends and
this is actually one of things my husband that we're talking about you know we
said you know what does happen you know if you just wanna know of anyone
actors that's optical important you know
it's without well you know you can kind of do that kind of daydreaming type
of thing where you can go back
in your mind i think about right where you know where was i when i
saw
this person within a black and white was in colour you know which you older
was younger
and then sometimes you might come to the answer and another time you might nine
you probably just forget about it
okay and we should also mention that you had help from jenny lose university wisconsin
madison and data when you're harvard university but betsy spare the lead author a psychologist
from columbia university thank selected only s and this is a rundown o'hara srinivasan stay
with us