What happens when we depend so much of our smart-phones? Why does every one never remember phone numbers anymore?
11:35 AM, I open my eyes. A bad mood invades me right away, and an annoying yet familiar noise is warning me that in 10 minutes another noise, exactly as this one will attempt to annoy me again. I wander, like a zombie, juggle around with some dirty clothes and, at last, reach the bathroom. I curse having exhausted me so much the day before, today it's a holiday, but in this country if you do nothing, you starve. With the light on my face, I look into the mirror and see that it's me; I already know this, but I've to confirm it.
In an instinctive reflex I get into the shower. At 1 PM I've to be in the lab, because at 2 PM there's a small meeting -I repeat to myself several times-. Later, almost at night some visitors are coming from another lab, I'll have to wear a nice shirt, the one I like is disrty, but it may hold it a day longer. Is the hair conditioner the one that is already opened? I can't see anything with shampoo in my eyes, and there's nearly no difference with the bottle of shampoo, fuck marketing. I'm late (which is not late, since I do that every single time).
As I walk, I think, talk to myself about ant memory. I remember my face, my agenda, my friends, my duties, my debts... the dirty clothes. I Recall the route I've to take to reach the bus stop, the broken sidewalks, the usual people I come across. I remember the song I'm listening to, the lyrics, the group. I remember an old girlfriend, and the thousand times I heard this song attempting to forget her (only to remember her a bit harder). I remember who I am, but I reassure so every second I remember something ("I, I, I"). But, What was Iceland's Capital?, and I get frustrated. Before falling into anguish, something taken for granted by people that lived in the 90s, I get my smart-phone out of my belt and (if the 3G allows me) I acquire all the relevant wisdom I need in a matter of minutes (Yes, it's 3G pal, very fucking slow!). Technology is great, isn't it?
To answer this little question we need to know something very simple but important: all those memories are in our brain, and they got in there thanks to 2 processes: acquisition and consolidation.
This is, as we learn something we do not instantly build a memory of it; instead, we unleash a consolidation process that "hardcodes" the memory over time. After that, evoking appears, this is how we name the process responsible of looking for that "print" in our memory, that's the one responsible of digging into the mess we've up there, and right there (at the useless info shelf) it gives me the answer: Reykjavik.
Within this conceptual mashup it would be logic to believe that it's good to keep our memories as much as a girlfriend (By this, I mean a long term). Of course, after such comment, I'm lucky to have a Harvard Scientist that my be blamed for it: The Dr. Wegner. His great idea is called "Transactive memory" that states the following:
When two people know each other for a long time (couple, friends, family...) they form a common memory pool, the transactive memory. This hypothesis makes reference to the capacity of dividing the troublesome tas of remembering shared information. This is indirectly, by attempting to save memory space one remembers all the birthday dates and the other one the place where we left the frikking car keys, preventing duplicate and redundant information from being stored.
And loving is so nice, until Google arrives.
Tech influences us. Above all, it influences our memory. From the moment we place Google as our daily ally in our lives, it's an external drive wired to our brain (I'm sure, I'm not the only one that "forgets" things that were studied, because I we don't use it quite often... and we can always remember parts by googling), the need for memorizing decreased considerably.
Knowing that our brain has a digital girlfriend able to store millions of years of data (It's not perfect, some girlfriends can remember what sock you were wearing that day you checked that random girls' ass in the street at 16:24:20 Hs), available anytime with nearly no delay. This takes away from us a lot of the responsibility of keeping memories, avoiding unnecessary strains. This strange marital behavior of "shared information" has such severe effects that it may even explain the "void sensation" felt after a divorce. You're no longer with your couple, leaving the dog behind, but taking half of your memory. If you don't feel vulnerable enough; it is also a similar feeling whenever internet drops or when our hard drives die.
We don't acquire, we don't learn and we don't consolidate, basically for one reason, laziness. To argument such a negative point of view, we could add that freeing that space in our brain allows us to perform "higher" tasks with the extra resources...
Wrong: the only thing we've improved was our ability to find MORE information, another reason to justify our energetic need for that external brain HD. This is the most Techie version of a vicious circle I've ever seen... Also, the most neurodegenerative one. A potential adaptive advantage that gelped us to be a better species, and, today we are using it to be and do "less".
My phone rings, it's telling me I've a meeting tomorrow, in which I've to give a short speech... I've to prepare it, and I still haven't typed a single line. I say "thank you"... I looks like I will have to "forget" this alarm ever went off...
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