We are already seeing it. Like someone mentioned below, do you have all the numbers in your phone memorized? I’m going to bet not because you no longer need to. I was thinking about that just the other day. I am guilty of this myself and what would I do if I got arrested for some stupid reason.
Would the officer be cool and let me use my own phone to call a family member? Or would I be stuck in the tank with a wall phone and no numbers in my head to even call anyone... That is when I realized it is already happening and it is indeed inevitable for the majority who become dependent on convenient handy technology.
The main problem is once it becomes a trend everyone gets sucked into it whether they want to or not. Just try to find a phone booth... Or somewhere along the road to buy a map... No one even carries maps anymore when every gas station used to have them.
This is probably apocryphal, but I remember it from my school daze: Einstein was once asked by a student how many feet were in a mile and he responded, “Never memorize something that you can look up.”
Here’s another anecdote about Einstein (probably apocryphal):
When leaving his office at Princeton at the end of the day, he would often stop a passerby and ask, “Excuse me, do you happen to know where I live?”
I wouldn’t say that Einstein’s absentmindedness was indicative of cognitive decline.