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Are we losing our ability to remember?

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Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#91

Post by Liquix »

sixdimensional wrote: post #61

I once took a class in college, “Cars and Culture”. I never forgot a line from that class - that “cars provided an extension of our legs”. Ever since then, I have told many people and thought to myself many times, that tools, take Google for instance (search and indexing), knowledge management systems (Wiki and other techniques) - these are all extensions of our brains. We evolve with technology, and it evolves with…

Doug Engelbart, a pioneer of the personal computer, would love your point about computers being extensions of our brains. His mission (in the 1950s!) was to find a way to 'augment human intellect' through technology, much like the biologist augments their eyesight through the microscope. The mind blowing part is that they didn't have anything to go off (or XEROX to copy) - imagine conceptualizing the personal computer decades before it hit the mainstream. Sorry for the rant!

https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/155/87/

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#92

Post by tannhaeuser »

Don't know about memory, but without doubt, the web defines our access to information, during the pandemic more than ever. With far-reaching consequences for politics, cognitive abilities, history, power balances, market access, etc. Which is why it's so enormously important to not let us slide control over the language(s) of the web, such as HTML and CSS out of our hands, but retain or regain participation and representation in web standards.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#93

Post by ravenstine »

whatshisface wrote: post #79
ravenstine wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed a few ways in which this overload of information manifests. You've got the people who consume a lot of "information" yet can't make much sense of it, or at least in a way that lines up to shared reality. I'd say this represents the average person. The main coping mechanism for these people is to consume information as entertainment and otherwise not think about what they're taking in. Otherwise, they mig…

> Even if my models of reality don't line up on a factual basis, the more important thing to me is whether I get results. Without specific memories, how can you tell whether or not you have been getting results? :)

It's up to you. :) If you're getting what you want out of life, or if your predictions are usually accurate, in spite of having a mental model that isn't technically correct, then that would mean having results that didn't come from excessive rumination or memorizing lots of units of specific information. Similarly, religion can lead a person to perform actions in a way that are of benefit even if the beliefs instilled upon them are factual nonsense. What I'm saying is that a person can do just that but with high level conceptual structures as opposed to either religion or pedantic data hoarding.

When you keep trying to do right, but your world is perpetually on fire, you probably aren't getting good results.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#94

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

I pre-date Google and whenever I had technical questions the only way I could get them answered was to explain to the person I was asking exactly what I was doing and why, and they would only answer me if they agreed 100% with what and how I was doing something. If they didn't like either then I didn't get my question answered. This forced me to have to go learn and memorize everything about all aspects of technology just so I didn't get roadblocked by someone having a bad day. Today Google is more of a convenient way to jog my memory - I can function just fine when the internet goes out, read a map if my GPS loses its signal, etc. I don't ever want to be one of those blank people who just stand there and stares when the screen blinks out.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#95

Post by kstenerud »

franze wrote: post #90

Whenever I do a SEO workshop I ask 3 questions to my audience: * How often did you Google this week? * What was the last thing before the last thing that you Googled? For the first question, I get laughs. For the second one blank stares. Later, I shoot another question: * What is the last thing you read, that you googled before, top to bottom? For the last question everybody looks at their feet. The use case I optimi…

40 years ago it would have been:

    * How often did you read articles in newspapers this week?
    * What was the last article before the last article that you read?
    * What is the last newspaper article that you read, top to bottom?
Or, for tech people:

    * How often did you read manpages this week?
    * What was the last manpage before the last manpage that you read?
    * What is the last manpage that you read, top to bottom?
We remember things differently depending on what the purpose of the information is, and that hasn't changed. There's absolutely no reason to shame people into "looking at their feet" over it. Throughout the ages, countless people have read the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, but very few people beyond actors who have actually performed it would know who said this, or even in what act it was said:

    Both by myself and many other friends:
    But he, his own affections' counsellor,
    Is to himself--I will not say how true--
    But to himself so secret and so close,
    So far from sounding and discovery,
    As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
    Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
    Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
    Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow.
    We would as willingly give cure as know.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#97

Post by rhn_mk1 »

me_me_me wrote: post #16
Swizec wrote: post #4

Wasn’t there a Greek philosopher who lamented how the youngs are losing their ability to remember because this newfangled invention called “writing” is making them lazy?

Yes but its us that live in era of weaponized attention grabbing. People are being paid millions to figure out how to hijack your attention, how to use yourself (body, mind functions) against you. Writing is a tool, it doesn't try to work against you, or have an agenda that might not be aligned with yours.

Writing is a technology. It's disputable if any technology is inherently neutral or not:

“One of the most dangerous things you can believe in this world is that technology is neutral.”

from https://thecompassmagazine.com/blog/is-technology-morally-ne...

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#98

Post by numpad0 »

franze wrote: post #90

Whenever I do a SEO workshop I ask 3 questions to my audience: * How often did you Google this week? * What was the last thing before the last thing that you Googled? For the first question, I get laughs. For the second one blank stares. Later, I shoot another question: * What is the last thing you read, that you googled before, top to bottom? For the last question everybody looks at their feet. The use case I optimi…

Sounds not necessarily bad were Google something open source or on-premise hosted.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#99

Post by SstnMbgty »

kstenerud wrote: post #95
franze wrote: post #90

Whenever I do a SEO workshop I ask 3 questions to my audience: * How often did you Google this week? * What was the last thing before the last thing that you Googled? For the first question, I get laughs. For the second one blank stares. Later, I shoot another question: * What is the last thing you read, that you googled before, top to bottom? For the last question everybody looks at their feet. The use case I optimi…

40 years ago it would have been: * How often did you read articles in newspapers this week? * What was the last article before the last article that you read? * What is the last newspaper article that you read, top to bottom? Or, for tech people: * How often did you read manpages this week? * What was the last manpage before the last manpage that you read? * What is the last manpage that you read, top to bottom? We r…

If you ask me to remember the last but one thing I said to someone I live with in my house, or the last thing they said to me, I wouldn't remember that either.

This doesn't mean I don't remember them, but my memories of these events are not structured as a temporally ordered list.

I can say with high likelihood some of the things I googled recently, and a good selection of the reasons I was googling, just as I can talk about things I discussed recently, even if I can't index them, but expecting that to be addressed in a sorted list is to confuse the simplicity of formulation of the question with simplicity of implementation.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#100

Post by tcbawo »

scotthtaylor wrote: post #65
sixdimensional wrote: post #61

I once took a class in college, “Cars and Culture”. I never forgot a line from that class - that “cars provided an extension of our legs”. Ever since then, I have told many people and thought to myself many times, that tools, take Google for instance (search and indexing), knowledge management systems (Wiki and other techniques) - these are all extensions of our brains. We evolve with technology, and it evolves with…

Yeah, I agree with you (nicely put btw) — what I find disconcerting is the fact that it's happening so quick, i.e. I notice myself evolving and changing over weeks/months and becoming increasingly reliant upon the external data stores. Pretty crazy we can adapt that quick!

I have heard someone describe the US as being an 'attention economy' rather than 'information economy'. There is too much data being thrown at us to absorb it all. This has led people to increasingly rely on third parties to prioritize, filter, distill, and curate these data. The disintegration of revenue models around information production and the consolidation in media publishing and search has compounded the problem. The result is an increase in hucksterism, fraud, and misinformation. Nothing can ever be completely proved or disproved and bad ideas never disappear. It's a new mode for humanity, which will force us to find a new equilibrium.
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