I read an interesting blog the other day “So Long Ago I Can’t Remember: Memory, Technology, and Creativity.” It hit straight to the heart of a problem that I have been pondering for several weeks now. Is ‘google’ our friend or is it actually causing an atrophy in the collective  knowledge of humanity. Professor Tracy Denis of the Psychology Department and the Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience Doctoral Program at Hunter College, The City University of New York provides some great insights into the way that we handle information in the modern age.

Gone are the days when students had to know everything by heart, when the in depth knowledge of a field was linked to how successful a person could be. These days we have discussions that don’t end with a conclusion but with the phrase ‘google it’.

I worry sometimes that the information age is actually an information overload that leads to the externalisation of information. In principle humanity knows more now than it ever has in history, the information is readily accessible around the world at any time.  I think though that the depth of knowledge that used to be carried by an individual is shifting as well, leading to more people knowing less and relying more on the collective knowledge of the internet. It seems like the average person knows less and less each year and is more and more reliant on their electronic device and the internet to provide information. I have several friends that cannot go anywhere without their GPS.

I am not sure whether this is the truth or just my perspective as a young scientist, working in my field I come across many different people but the ones that always amaze me are the old professors that just seem to know everything, I wonder sometimes if I will ever be like that. I worry now that the easy access of information reduces the necessity of my mind to store it, will we become entirely dependant on the devices around us to store our information and analyse it for us? This has been something that has been on my mind for quite some time now but I am beginning to see a glimmer of hope, when reading a new article or looking at the research of another Phd student some parts of research that I have done in the past or articles I have read come back to me. It is amazing how the human brain works, inside our minds we capture so much more information than we are consciously aware of. I think that there is definitely a balance here, that the information ages is beginning to reach, in which the information we store locally in our minds acts as a reference library to direct us where to find the in depth information that is stored online or in our electronic devices.

This will be a dynamic shift from the way that people stored and handled information in the past. Allowing one individual to be an expert in many fields by having an efficient method for referencing their information, this is a stark transition from the old method where one individual knew one field with a great depth but was often less capable in unrelated fields. I do not know whether this will be an advantage or a disadvantage in the scientific process but I am sure we will find out over the next few decades.

One limitation of this approach is the impact on creativity that knowledge externalisation will lead to. I think that it is very important for us to internalise the information that we interact with, this process enables creativity. Taking two separate concepts and linking them together in a new way is the essence of creativity but if we don’t have the individual concepts firmly in our minds it becomes difficult to interconnect them. I hope that as we move to a decentralised knowledge base where complete understanding of a topic is provided online but not necessarily kept in the heads of individuals that we don’t end up stifling our creativity.

In the end I believe the ease of access to information isn’t degrading the collective knowledge of humanity but it is definitely shifting it, whether this is good or bad only time will tell.

Cheers,
Daniel