15 Jul 2011 01:10 PM Removing The Nuts And Bolts Of Knowledge
by Chris Bodenner
The Internet is wreaking havoc on our memory skills, a new study finds. Nick Carr is all over it:
If a fact stored externally were the same as a memory of that fact stored in our mind, then the loss of internal memory wouldn't much matter. But external storage and biological memory are not the same thing. When we form, or "consolidate," a personal memory, we also form associations between that memory and other memories that are unique to ourselves and also indispensable to the development of deep, conceptual knowledge. The associations, moreover, continue to change with time, as we learn more and experience more. As Emerson understood, the essence of personal memory is not the discrete facts or experiences we store in our mind but "the cohesion" which ties all those facts and experiences together. What is the self but the unique pattern of that cohesion?
And, to invoke another metaphor, because the brain is like a muscle, taking away the tiny but countless opportunities to exercise it weakens its ability to perform the higher-level thinking that we can't use computers for.
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