At my last job, whenever my officemates or I had a question none of us could answer we knew it would only take a few clicks on the computer to figure it out. It became standard procedure, that if you asked a question and no one responded straight away — you knew they were looking it up.
Our dependence on instant access to information has become so ingrained, I wonder how society ever managed without it?
A recent study has confirmed this reliance among younger generations and their inability to retain important personal information:
“… neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative’s birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.”
So the question is, since we don’t exercise our memory as often anymore, does that make it less efficient?
Filed under: Links | Tagged: intelligence, memory, technology
