Memorization sometimes gets a bad rap in the education world. Yes, education IS way more than just memorizing facts, dates, formulas, spellings, and pronunciations. But you do have to get information into the brain somehow, right? Technology has brought more information to our fingertips, but does it also make us forget things more easily? The analysis takes a look at how Google and its tools have changed how we find and retain information. Pretty interesting stuff – and if you can’t remember it later to tell your colleagues about what you read, you can always refer back to this page!
How Google Affects Memory
Google Services As Extensions of Knowledge
- Google calendar reminds you of all the events in your life so you don’t have to.
- Google Docs helps keep all of your documents at your fingertips; No more worrying where something is or if you saved what you were working on.
- Google Search: Basically anything you could want to know about it just a click away.
- Google analytics analyzes your sites traffic so you can optimize – without having to do any of the analytic legwork.
- Google images allows you to use photos to find out information about the objects in the photos you take (like paintings or landmarks). No remembering necessary.
- Google maps means you never have to remember directions or addresses.
How is Google Changing Our Memory?
Before: Without internet access, we had to do a lot of legwork to find the information we were looking for. We then found ways to memorize and remember the things we needed to know. The next time we needed to remember that information, we were likely to remember it because we took the time to research it and use mental devices (like visual memory, mneumonic devices, etc) to remember it.
Now: When we need to know something, we turn to our trusty computers and look it up. Since the information is so readily available, we don’t often take the time to encode the information into our brains. So the next time we need to remember that information, it is likely that we’ll need to look it up again
The Consequences (Good and Bad)
- We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools.
- Accessibility of information is great – this doesn’t necessarily mean that we won’t remember it just because it is easily available.
- Human recall is flawed – every time we remember something, we remake it somewhat. Tools like Google search act as fact checkers for us.
- We have a lot of information stored in our computer based memories for our use. More information than ever before!
- We no longer have the need to memorize any details – and often don’t!
- These new habits may interfere with our development of deeper knowledge.
- Misinformation is common on the internet.
