People (mostly) don't complain about books because we fail to recognize the trade off, or else we accept it, but there are certainly useful places for memorizat

People (mostly) don't complain about books because we fail to recognize the trade off, or else we accept it, but there are certainly useful places for memorization of large amounts of information. Not only is it more easily summoned when you need it, but it's more fully internalized. By comparison, I know almost nothing about the books on my bookshelf, despite having spent significant amounts of time reading each of them.