more to follow
I’m sorry, what?
Since no one is ever held accountable for anything, “I don’t recall” is a perfectly acceptable answer anymore.
HELL, MOST TIMES I CAN’T REMEMBER MY OWN PHONE NUMBER!...............Like, how often do you call yourself?.................
Memory, it’s the second thing to go. I forget what the first is.
People have 7 second attention spans these days anyway.
I’m quite the opposite. I remember every phone number I ever dialed more than once. It’s NOT a gift, it’s a pain in the neck.
When I was a kid it was called “day planner amnesia.”
Digital sounds so much scarier.
I know damned well what I did on Monday. I can even remember what I did Monday a year ago.
You sure they’re not calling it “Digital Apathy”?
Arrgh! So darn many FreeRepublic Postings! I can only keep so much data in my brain.
No, it’s because too many things are competing for long term storage.
Let’s go back 50 years, before the internet.
How many strings of random numbers did we have to keep in our heads? A few phone numbers, maybe social security and your main car’s license plate. Oh, and your anniversary.
A rolodex would handle everything else you needed infrequently.
Now look at today... 200 Facebook friends, hundreds of cell phone numbers, passwords for half a dozen computers and dozens of websites. Separate critical passwords for banks or government sites. Email addresses by the hundreds.
You have to choose what you will focus your attention and memory on. I bet those same people CAN call up a bunch of other memorized stuff but the question is WHICH stuff and are they making good decisions about what to remember?
I don’t blame anyone these days when someone asks what did you do on monday and it takes a while to come up with it... that’s the kind of load modern life places on our memories. Things like dinner on monday aren’t important. Other things are.
In one respect I agree we are “doing it wrong” by letting tech rule us rather than the other way around. In another respect the question is “so what?” as long as you have the info you need organized and stored where you can get at it?
Which is why I never rely on speed dial.
The government better step in to help us.
Never remember any thing that is written
cluttering one’s mind with things that can be easily looked up is not a good practice
With the internet, the challenge is to organize sources but Bing does an outstanding job.
I’m trying to correct my problem by going to AA meetings. They have a 12 -step program for people who suffer from Analog Amnesia. Whoopsie! I see this one is about Digital Amnesia. My bad.
There’s no reason to remember stuff you don’t have to. Really if your phone stores all the numbers you need then the only thing you have to remember is how to access that storage. It’s efficient. Also these kind of studies tend to discount muscle memory. Sitting right here right now I couldn’t tell you my ATM or house alarm PINs, at the ATM or front door, beep beep beep beep no problem. Like it or not we really do have a finite amount of brain space, remembering things we don’t need to is a waste, so we don’t.
Actually, when you consider that after you’ve turned 80 ish, you have crammed tons and tons of stuff into your head.
So, try to remember that when you can’t seem to REMEMBER a word or two .. it’s in there, you just have to remind your brain that you put it in there some time ago .. and it may take awhile to find it ...... BUT I ALWAYS FIND IT ..!!!!!
How do I do that ..?? I just ask GOD to help me find the word and HE always does.
Therefore, I figure by the time I’m 80 .. in a few hundred years .. I’ll have even more stuff to discover tucked away in my brain somewhere.
Good news to me! I’d thought it was the fault of age, aged bourbon, and aged cigars.