There was a time, once, way back in the past, when I needed to depend on my memory for things. It’s such a vague memory that it seems more like a dream than reality, but if I focus really hard, I can recall it.
It was in a time before the proliferation of the internet, and a time of unrest among friends and family, when disputes could only be settled with a combination of collective memories and fisticuffs. Many people died and many more were maimed, all in the name of righteousness. Marriages were torn asunder and lifelong friendships destroyed. It was a simpler time, a more noble time (some might say).
In our modern age of conveniences and machines, of gender and racial equality, of peace and understanding, I have been relieved of the burden of memory by the wonderful people at Internet Inc. (a subsiduary of SkyNet) and can now focus all mental energies elsewhere, namely arguing about the things I read on the internet.
And now, two simple examples of how the internet saved me from my own memory, from my own mind and having to actually learn.
Case Study, The First: The Internet Movie Database (IMDB)
Some of my favourite discussions and arguments from my childhood and adolescence came about from remembering (or trying to ) movie names, years of release, actors and characters. Those of you who share my seasoned vintage of 30 years may recall “Six Degrees of Bacon”, a ‘game’ (used in the loosest definition of the word) where one would try to connect two actors professionally through the works of Golden Globe-nominated actor Kevin Bacon.
A small piece of me died one day in 2000 when I found The Oracle of Bacon online and realized that the ‘fun’ (also used in the loosest definition of the word) of the game had been completely automated, thanks to a huge database of movie information.
Since that day, the answers to any of my questions related to film or TV are just 9 keystrokes away at IMDB.com (the extra stroke is for the ‘Enter’ key). Not only are my questions answered, but I read all sorts of seemingly useful information that entertains me for fleeting moments, and that I believe will enlighten me for years to come. Alas, it is an illusion, a house of cards, and the moment I steer off the page, it is all lost to me.
Case Study, The Second: Wikipedia
I don’t remember when it was that I first encountered Wikipedia, but I know it came up first in a long list of Google search results. It sounded foreign and dangerous, but I clicked on it anyways (so I was probably on someone else’s computer at the time).
I was immediately assaulted with data, and my senses were quickly overloaded. What’s more, it seemed every word in the article linked to its own article with yet more links to other articles, and so on. It felt as though I had access to every mind alive on the planet all at once.
Wikipedia quickly became my default stop for information on any topic, and if I couldn’t find it there, I knew it would be hard as hell to find anywhere. I also found myself spending hours clicking from topic to topic until I forgot why I event went there in the first place.
And yet, what I read there isn’t absorbed or learned after I use it to answer a specific question, satisfy a curiosity or merely to waste time. It is there for a moment, then it’s gone, like all fleeting things.
Conclusion
So is this knowledge at all? Why do I treat all this information as waste? I think the answer is two-fold:
- there is so much information contained therein, that to even attempt to absorb it would be foolishness, especially considering that
- all of these data are available for free, any time of day or night (where the internet is available, which is nearly everywhere) thus negating my need to absorb it for later retrieval.
It is as though my mind is now a smaller piece of a larger hive-mind and mine isn’t needed for data storage any longer but for processing; a machine to link these bits of stored data into meaningful connections.
That, my friends, is what is happening. While the internet is certainly making me remember FAR less, it’s certainly not making me any dumber. On the contrary, it is forcing me to find meaning and purpose for all this new-found raw information.
Sometimes that means settling a long-standing dispute, and others it means connecting two works by the same author, director or actor. Of course, sometimes it just lets me watch a video of a monkey drinking his own pee, so maybe we shouldn’t overthink it, eh?
