"Jared Horvath, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne, says that the way people now consume information and entertainment has changed what type of memory we value—and it's not the kind that helps you hold onto the plot of a movie you saw six months ago.
"In the Internet age, recall memory—the ability to spontaneously call information up in your mind—has become less necessary. It’s still good for bar trivia, or remembering your to-do list, but largely, Horvath says, what’s called recognition memory is more important. 'So long as you know where that information is at and how to access it, then you don’t really need to recall it,' he says.
"Research has shown that the Internet functions as a sort of externalized memory. 'When people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself,' as one study puts it. But even before the Internet existed, entertainment products have served as externalized memories for themselves. You don’t need to remember a quote from a book if you can just look it up."
—From "Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read" by Julie Beck. Plato's opinion makes him seem like a bit of an old grump, doesn't it? Those kids with their new technology. Harrumph. And consider the words of the Egyptian king Thamus in light of the way photographs "preserve our memories." :-)
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