Google Knows My Middle Name, But I Can’t Recall It
Where did I plant that guerilla garden?
What was the name of those mountains I lived by for six years?
When was my brother in that coma?
I’m sure that by now, you’ve read something about the Google Effect. If not, go on and search it now; after all, this post will still be here in twenty minutes, an hour, a week, a year. It will be here as long as someone keeps paying the hosting fees for thebarking.com, and if you forget what it’s called, you can always google it under the following search terms: bark, memory, memoir, google effect. According to the Google Effect, you don’t really have to remember a thing, since our memories are being stored outside ourselves. Right now, the Science mag article is just talking about our memory of information that really, it’s debatable whether we need to remember it or not: who’s that actor who is going into the University of Houston Ph.D. program in creative writing? What city in Ohio is offering homesteading benefits for residents who mow the lawns of foreclosures?
What does this mean for memoirists? When does “what was the name of that basketball player I went to high school with” become “what was the name of the high school I went to” or “what county did I grow up in?”
Yes, this sounds absurd–barring a significant brain event, how could someone not remember information that is essential to his/her person, like a maternal grandmother’s name? Especially when it’s a security question to log into his/her Sallie Mae student loan accounts? Unless he/she e-mails it somewhere so that Gmail will index their login information under searchable terms? If you think about a lot of those prompts that serve to jog your memory, like drawing a map of the house you grew up in, you might realize that it’s only a matter of time before Google Earth has floor plans of your childhood home.
A long time ago, Plato hypothesized that basic symbolic literacy would trash our memories:
“It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when it came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: … this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.”
And to be sure, I never quote poems during dinner parties, let alone recite whole episodes of the Odyssey by firelight. Though, in my defense, I do have the uncanny ability to quickly locate a meaningful passage in a book, because I tend to recall whether the position of the text–recto or verso, approximate heft of pages read. Which is kind of like the Google Effect problem: while we may not remember the specific information, we have an impressive ability to find it.
And it’s pretty easy to find information about yourself if you catalogue your life. I’ve always stored information outside of my brain–I used to call it journaling and photographing, and for a while it became letter-length e-mails and blogging–and regrettably, these records began to supplant the ones I held in my head. As in I began to remember the record of the event rather than the event itself. When I think of all the times I went to Three Rivers, NM–a site that contains more than 21,000 petroglyphs and was probably a detriment to the memory to Jornada Mogollon people, whose pueblo ruin sits to the east–I only recall this photograph.
But when I look at the photo, I remember a ton of information–a million things about the person in the photograph, what that particular trip was like, how a whole year felt, some glyphs of hand spirals, and that the shirt he’s wearing was made out of recycled plastic bottles. I remember a million things because while how we remember is different, we’ll still remember things, but we only have to remember right away the information necessary to access the external system. I remember the one photo and the photo is like a hotlink to the rest of the information. Which is reasonable and why most people take photographs to begin with.
So what’s wrong with relying on Google to act as (basically) a memory aid? I know that the information will be retained online somewhere between the lifespan of papyrus and stone. And as long as our brains still make segues of information, we’ll probably remember some pertinent stuff for our memoirs.
After all, if you’re playing a game of Concentration and you can tweet the location of circles, squares, etc., the game will end quickly. But if you don’t take notes on your smartphone, the game will still end. It just takes longer.
Brilliant post, Amaris. This makes me wonder about what it really means to learn something, to know it, and whether it matters if we can keep things in our heads or not. Lately, I’ve decided that learning is a process of problem solving, which means it’s not a process of memorizing, but rather of gathering the necessary information, tools, skills to solve whatever problem is at hand. And if this is true, then what we really need to remember is how to use search engines and cameras and table saws. (My latest problem is how to build a table out of hundred-year-old wood, hence the table saw.)
When I was a kid, I asked a teacher one time how she got to be so smart, you know smart enough to teach us and answer questions and all of that. She said that all she had to learn was how to look up information.
Part of the search engine access to knowledge is that The Great Vastness creates a Vast Thinness in our knowledge. Is it better to know things thinly (what year was Pepsi Clear sold in vending machines? what TV show was Franco in, anyway?) or deeply (like when you acculturate in a new place and have that aha! or really learn a craft like poetry or carpentry)?
Great post. I’ve half thought about googling things that happened to me in the past to see if I could figure it all out–what really happened–as if there might be some definitive record online.
But what Truth would that record hold, you think?
I want it to hold the ABSOLUTE truth. I want it to be the last word — the accurate record of what really happened.
Server-side cognition storage. Interesting. Coupled with our increased ability to learn new facts and skills on the fly through social media, it’s almost as if we’re developing a collective intelligence via artificial means.
The evolution of the Noosphere!
The transhumanist implications alone are striking.
I’m always amazed at the stuff I do remember from childhood. I can’t for the life of me recall what I learned in class during first through third grade, even though I know I spent a large amount of time memorizing stuff. I do however remember a lot of weird games I played during recess and most of the hand-clapping rhyme and jump rope verse we recited.
My husband is the opposite. He remembers what he studied, but not what he played or the names of his childhood friends.
[...] It was only a matter of time. Google is asking people to submit floor plans to Google Maps. Say goodbye to hiding out in that Batcave you have in the attic. [...]