Outsourced thinking
First time I saw this piece by Lynette I dismissed it.
Yeah...Whatever. I thought to myself.
Then I went online to find a mate's phone number.
Later on I checked the spelling of a word at dictionary.com.
When I finally found time to tee up drinks with a friend via Facebook I realised Lynette was right.
Many of the things my brain used to do, like remembering phone numbers and spelling, is now done by my computer.
Thing is, I wonder what I'm using all that spare brain space for now?
Click the pic to enlarge.
posted by Stan Lee at 7:46 pm
4 Comments:
This post makes me think of a maths teacher I had in the last year of school who encouraged us to do mental arithmetic as opposed to constantly using a calculator. Until that point I had been pretty lazy and found it a little difficult to get used to at first, but in that year my mental arithmetic improved dramatically. Just shows you how well the mind works when you actually use it.
But with many other things, I find the same phenomenon you described - the only numbers I really know are my own mobile, work, my mum's and my gran's. Without my mobile I'd be pretty much lost. So, I'm going to succumb to the barrage of marketing for the Nintendo DS and get it and the brain game they always advertise for it. I really should know better... Maybe I should just start actually conciously making an effort to remember things when i'm told instead!
Strange isn't it - you don't realise it until someone points it out but it's very true. Mostly because Google is so good at what it does. And perhaps the fact that Google even corrects your spelling for you means that we don't feel it's so important to know how to spell anymore? I hope not - I'm a bit old fashioned when it comes to stuff like that.
hear ya stan: http://chromainc.typepad.com/chroma_inc/2007/10/i-cant-remember.html
Primarily I use my new-found neural real estate for the storage of pornography ie the spank bank.
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