I wonder whether anyone else has wondered about this.
Back in The World Before Internet, which I know is to many something like the Cretaceous Age, we often forgot things.
And then labored to recall the missing information.
You might be sitting around a dinner table with family, chatting about the movies, and somebody says, “Remember that movie with Peter Falk and the other guy...what was his name, I forget. You know, where Falk was a CIA man and the other guy was a dentist?” And somebody else at the table says, “Oh, yeah, I remember that! But, isn’t it terrible, the other actor’s name slips my mind too!”
And everybody at the table racks their brains to summon up the actor’s name.
More often than not, nobody would recall the name on the spot, but a half-hour later, just when somebody is sharing their secret ingredient to make the best pumpkin pie in the world, it hits somebody else:
“And the very last thing you add to the pumpkin before it goes into the crust is—“
“Alan Arkin!”
And everybody joins the chorus: “Aaaaaalan Aaaaarkin, oh yeeeeah!”
But today the scenario goes: “Yeah, that movie with Peter Falk and the other guy—you know, where Falk was a CIA man and the other guy...what was his name...played a dentist?”
“Hold on. [Tap, tap, tap] Alan Arkin. The In-Laws.”
Today’s scenario is far more efficient, of course. Nobody has to try and remember anymore. No more brain-racking. No sudden revelation in the middle of the pie recipe followed by the chorus of collective recognition.
Nope, nobody has to try and remember anymore. Why, we practically don’t need to FORGET anymore. We’re skipping right PAST that inner “I forget” moment and cutting straight to “Info wanted. Google.” We’re typing even before we’ve asked ourselves whether we already know it.
Which makes me wonder what the abandonment of brain-racking, even the abandonment of REMEMBERING, is likely to do to the human mind. How is the brain likely to change in a perpetual forget-and-remember-free environment?
What will it turn us into?
(Well, not me. I’m too old to stop forgetting and remembering. I’m hard-wired, thank God, to brain-rack, to scour the mental files.)
But what will this way of being make of minds and brains in coming generations likely to function on a core, hard-wired assumption that all necessary information is there at the tap-tap-tap of a keyboard—or indeed, just a mental call-out to the Net once the chips are implanted? What cognitive muscles will atrophy, finally blip out of existence, and what will that make of the Human Being?
(A scary thing about that scenario: who is DECIDING what “all necessary information” is?)
When the day comes that everyone has forgotten how to remember, will anyone ever remember how to forget?
Computers never forget. But humans do.
Don’t they?
