Ubiquitous Information and Retrieval

Joab Jackson writes about "search engines supplanting our memory" in ComputerWorld. Researchers have found that students memorize less material if the information can be located later. Researchers also found that students were more likely to recall the source where they found information than the information itself.

Jackson summarized John Bohannon's article Searching for the Google Effect on People's Memory which appeared in the July 15, 2011 issue of Science and another article on the Science website entitle "Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips" by Betty Sparrow, Jenny Liu and Daniel M. Wegner. Jackson provides this quote from Betty Sparrow:

I don't think that the parts of our brain that can remember information are atrophied," she said. While the Internet is fairly new, the act of relying on external resources for memory is not new for humans. People have long relied on friends, co-workers and family to keep track of information that they themselves have forgotten. The researchers call this phenomena "transactive memory."

[I suspect that disruption of transactive memory may be a cause for homesickness, and partially explain why when one spouse dies, the other is so devastated.]

-DD