Misty Watercolored Memories

Oh, the more that things change, the more they stay the same:

As more people find themselves spending much of the day within arm's reach — or even pocket's reach — of something that can tap into the Internet, search engine Google quickly is taking the place of not only a trip to the library, but also a call home to Mom, a recipe box, the phone book and neighborly advice.

In fact, it has become the key to a huge repository of trivia, the kind that once rattled around in the back of our minds. Call it our auxiliary brain.

Kristin Beltramini, a recent college graduate, can't imagine keeping things like the capital of Turkey or how to get red wine out of the carpet in her long-term memory.

So the search engine is eroding our ability (or desire) to remembner things, eh? Funny, that's exactly the effect that the invention of printing had on European culture 500 years ago. Before print (and the literacy that it brought), we were a primarily oral culture and everything was stored in people's heads. Only after print made literacy widespread did everyone think to write things down.

And it wasn't just printing:

Do these experiences mean that Google is fundamentally changing our notion of memory? Plato wrote: "For this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it; they will not exercise their memories." He wasn't talking about Google; he was talking about writing.

Not bothering to commit trivia to memory isn't a character flaw; it's part of a long-ongoing process, academics say. "Memorizing is not something that people typically have done since the invention of writing," says Fernando Pereira, chairman of the computer and information science department at the University of Pennsylvania.

And despite Plato's complaints, even writing didn't change the process of memory, just what we chose to remember, says Pam Frese, a professor of anthropology at The College of Wooster in Ohio.

In pre-literate societies, what was worth remembering might be complex information about who can marry whom, or the history of long-term trading relationships, she says. Today, "the emphasis on what kinds of knowledge need to be remembered has shifted."