12.15.2010

The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge

A fascinating article on Tech Crunch, and something I've sometimes thought about:

The problem lies with the trend. We’re looking up more things, more often, and not because we’re more curious. It’s because we can’t be bothered to retain even the data that matter to us.

As we become more and more reliant on looking up rather than retaining information are we becoming more dumb? I believe I studied some of the ideas presented here in my Artificial Intelligence class at University over ten years ago. It basically theorized that when a human writes something down, the brain feels no need to retain the information, it's externalized. It's hardly a stretch to replace 'writes something down' with 'looks something up'. I'm trying my best to remember the name of the book, and resisting the temptation to look it up.

EDIT: So I caved and looked it up (I found it on one of my old sites on archive.org!). The book was called Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again by Andy Clarke. The chapter in question is at the very end of the book, Where Does the Mind Stop and the Rest of the World Begin? Considering this book was first publish in 1996, this question has never seemed more relevant.