SAN JOSE, Calif. — A new study confirms it: Google is
altering your brain. More precisely, our growing dependence on the
Internet has changed how — and what — our brains choose to remember.
When we know where to find information, we’re less
likely to remember it — an amnesia dubbed “The Google Effect” by a team
led by psychologist Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University.
Goodbye, soul-searching; hello, facts-at-fingertips.
The finding, published in Friday’s issue of the
journal Science, doesn’t prove that Google, Yahoo or other search
engines are making us dumber, as some have asserted. We’re still capable
of remembering things that matter — and are not easily found online,
Sparrow said.
Rather, it suggests that the human memory is
reorganizing where it goes for information, adapting to new computing
technologies rather than relying purely on rote memory. We’re
outsourcing “search” from our brains to our computers.
“We’re not thoughtless empty-headed people who don’t
have memories anymore,” Sparrow said. “But we are becoming particularly
adept at remembering where to go find things. And that’s kind of
amazing.”
In a series of four experiments at Columbia and
Harvard, Sparrow and her team found that students are more likely to
recall a trivial fact if they think it will be erased from the computer —
and forget it if they’re assured it will be there.
Similarly, the team proved that people are better at
remembering where to find facts, rather than the facts themselves. The
students, they found, recalled the names of files where information was
stored, rather than the information itself.
This creates a mental dependency on instant access to information, the team noted.
No wonder the loss of our Internet connection feels
like losing a friend, they wrote. Once we become reliant on a huge
reservoir of information, it feels uneasy to be away from it, she said.
“We must remain plugged in to know what Google knows,” the paper concludes.
But in many ways, this is no different than humans’
age-old reliance on the “group memories” shared by friends, families and
tribes, noted Sparrow and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin
and Harvard University.
We may not recall our aunt’s birthday, the name of a
high school teacher or who gave us that nice bottle of wine — but
someone we know does.
“We all have these people in our lives who know
certain things. And we dip into what they know, when we need it,” said
Sparrow. “We allow them to be responsible for it.”
“I really think we are using the Internet the way we used to use people,” she said.
While Google said it could not comment on the premise
of the paper, spokesman Gabriel Stricker said, “Search is how Google
began, and we’re constantly working to improve it. Search can always get
better and faster at helping you find what you want, when you want it,
where you want it.”
Proving that the Internet is merely an expanded
network of people, New York University professor Clay Shirky, author of
the book “Cognitive Surplus,” has done the math: The articles, edits,
and arguments on Wikipedia represent around 100 million hours of human
labor, he calculated. That’s more than 11,400 years.
If we quit remembering, “the Internet would grind to a halt,” Sparrow said. “Nobody would be feeding anything into it.”
There are losses — unlike their great-grandparents,
few of today’s children can recite poems like “The Rime of The Ancient
Mariner.” Perhaps this is a skill that, when not practiced, turns rusty.
Sparrow disagrees with Nicholas Carr, whose alarming
2008 article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” explains what he sees as the
brain-corrosive side effects of digital devices.
It doesn’t prove that we’re incapable of thinking
long and hard about anything, she said. “And it could be that once we
stop worrying about memorizing dates and facts and names, we’re better
able to concentrate.”
In fact, a wired life may actually open up more
creative things to do with our brain, the team said. Psychologists have
long known that it is easier to grasp an abstract concept when the brain
is not fixated on memorizing facts.
“Why remember something if I know I can look it up
again? In some sense, with Google and other search engines, we can
offload some of our memory demands onto machines,” Roddy Roediger, a
psychologist at Washington University, told Science in an accompanying
article.
Sparrow got interested in the topic one night at
home, while watching the 1944 mystery-thriller “Gaslight.” She knew she
recognized the maid — but couldn’t remember her name.
“Before the Internet, I’d trace it back in my mind
… thinking ‘Where else did I see her? Was it in black and white, or
color? Was I with friends, or not? What book might know?’ Anything to
find a clue,” she said.
Instead she went online and in seconds had an answer: An 18-year-old Angela Lansbury.
“I turned to my husband and said ‘What did we do before the Internet?’ “
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