I noticed, my memory has gotten worse.
And that although I am reading and learning new information every week. The problem is that I don’t have to remember a lot of information anymore because I save it on my phone or my computer. The knowledge of storage location has replaced the knowledge of the actual piece of information.
As a kid, I could remember the phone numbers of all my family members and friends, but now I am lost without my smartphone.
It’s the same with directions. There are a couple of places that I visit only once a year for which I have to look up the directions every single time I go there. If someone asked me for the address, I would not know for sure without double-checking on my phone.
Thanks to our phones we outsource brain function. And that is dangerous in the long run. I am worried that we will be too dependent on technology. Consider all the things we can’t do without our phones anymore. This loss in ability goes far beyond remembering names, birthdays or phone numbers.
I suggest weaning off of the memory crutches by starting to use more of our brains again.
For example, we could try memorizing one piece of information per day. Such information can be a historical fact, a name, a phone number, a chemical formula, anything really.
We could write down this information and measure our success by testing our fact recall at the end of the week.
It’s worth a try, isn’t it?