MEMORY
Memory is a very interesting topic for scientists. They are doing continuous research to find out more about memory, what shapes it, how we store things in our memory and why we forget things. Today, in our article, we’d like to share the findings of one scientific research study about memory. This study was made at Columbia University.
The research says that the Internet is changing our memory. To prove this thesis, the researchers asked people different questions. As the people heard the questions, they began to think of computers. The head of the research, Dr. Betsy Sparrow said, “When people in the test know that the answers are on a computer, they don’t do well on the memory tests.” We use the Internet as a new memory. Because we know that the computer can remind us, we do not bother to remember. It’s like storing our personal data on a hard disk. The Internet is like a big storage device for all the world’s information and knowledge. It keeps everything safely for us, so we forget things easily. Dr. Sparrow says, “Computers aren’t making us less intelligent. I don’t think Google is making us stupid. We’re just changing the way that we remember things.”
According to Dr. Sparrow’s research results, we are not storing the information that we learn but we are improving on keeping folders of information on our computers. We are becoming better at remembering the location of the information, not the information itself.