Use it or lose it

A recent study by American scientists - and since they're American we can't call them "boffins", much as we'd like to - suggests that the instant availability of facts via Google and other search engines is causing us to remember where to look for facts rather than remembering the facts themselves.

Well, duh. This process has been going on since the Babylonians invented tax 5,000 years ago with their cuneiform records of who owed the priests money (I'm nearly sure that's right, but I haven't checked with Google yet). In my own lifetime, the knowledge of the 'times table' and how to use a slide rule - both thrashed into me as if my life depended on it - became largely irrelevant with the advent of the pocket calculator. I was allowed to have both slide rule and pocket calculator on the desk during my maths O-level, and you won't be surprised to hear which I chose to use.

For the younger readers, I should perhaps say that the slide rule was a strange object consisting of various sliding sections with strange markings on them, with a cursor block that slid up and down as well. By careful and informed manipulation of the various slidy bits, you could perform your calculations and get a very accurate answer. But it didn't tell you the order of magnitude - or in other words, where to put the decimal point - so you had to be able to approximate the calculation by other means. I bet you can see where we took to the pocket calculator like a tabloid to a PIN number. Plus you could do real cool stuff on your calculator like nearly spell 'HELLO' upside down, with a bit of work.

There are in my opinion two great secrets to a successful, productive and happy life. Humans are good at both of them, if they put a little effort in.

First: be adaptable.
Second: minimise your therbligs - that is to say, be efficient.

So, embrace technology. Don't clutter your mind with imperfectly remembered data. Learn to search for it effectively, and leave your mind free for creative thought. Instead of relying for the whole of your life on the one slanted view that your teacher served up as 'facts' during those lessons all those years ago, learn to keep learning as new facts and new interpretations emerge.

And yet... and yet...

That's all very well in theory, but I worry that my generation - that had basic literacy and numeracy hammered in at all costs - has the advantage over those following on, in that if all the electricity fails I can still work out the change I should get at the shop. (Although these days, if the electronic tills stop working, they won't sell you anything, so maybe this is a moot point.) I could still use a slide rule with a bit of squinting. I don't need to use a spell-checker. I don't need Word underlining dubious grammar for me.

I don't know whether we've got the right balance yet. I do know I love the instant gratification of momentary curiosity that Google offers. And I can do far more work in a given day than I could when research involved physical travel to a good library or an awful lot of time on the phone and sending off for hard copy publications. But it's good to know that a lot of basic stuff is up there in the memory and not reliant on Google.

---

By the way, I know that the phrase "PIN number" contains a redundancy. But it's common usage, and I'm as common as they come.