4 ms·

Is the Internet an extension of human memory?

41 points by thomasdavis 15y ago

khan_chan 15y ago
it can be...
s2r2 15y ago
For the philosophically inclined: http://consc.net/papers/extended.html http://consc.net/papers/extended.html (the famous "The Extended Mind" paper from Clark/Chalmers) (And http://philpapers.org/browse/the-extended-mind http://philpapers.org/browse/the-extended-mind for in-depth information)
- thomasdavis 15y ago
  I was actually trying to find resources when I was writing this but couldn't so this is very helpful, thanks! I recall reading about other mechanical devices like the steering wheel and computer mice being extensions of the human body. Does anyone know what it's called?
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    That kind of thing falls under the definition of 'cyborg,' actually. Even wearing glasses technically makes you a cyborg.
  - billswift 15y ago
    I vaguely remember reading something on the Web years ago, but there are two books I know of that discuss this idea: Donald Norman's Things That Make Us Smart and Andy Clark's Natural-born Cyborgs.
jeggers5 15y ago
Always loved the concept of my mind having a direct link to the internet. Instant information and communication with ANYBOY, instantly and effortlessly.
tobylane 15y ago
No, it requires manipulation of the real world (typing and waiting), it cannot ever be categorized in the unique way each of our brains work and most of all it's not offline.
- patio11 15y ago
  The delta between memory and assisted memory is getting smaller over time, though. My memory of every paper I ever wrote for school and for my first day job is pretty slim. Every word I've written since that is accessible with about ten seconds of reflection and Google. Much of the important stuff is accessible on my iPad, too. (The additional accessibility of it makes it easier to re-read, which keeps it in active memory, too.) I'm in paperwork-filing mode right now for immigration. I've done it before, largely backed by paper notes. It is stressful, highly technical, and not my field. This time, I'm backed by Dropbox and my iPad. I have literally asked for a moment during discussions with clerks at town hall and then read sentences from the relevant Ministry of Justice regulations directly to them. ("I need a document proving that I have properly executed my duty to pay all forms of tax for last year, including that from $YOUR_OFFICE. Can you help me out with that? No? OK, let's see, you have a form, it is called a... one minute... Certification Of Tax Payment for City And Prefectural Taxes. I'd like to apply for that. It will cost me 250 yen, apparently. No ma'am, I believe it is quite likely you will find that form if you look. Yes ma'am, that is the one, thank you.") Do I have an encyclopedic command of obscure regulations written by a foreign government in my third language? No. But the system of myself and my technological crutches strongly gives the appearance of that. Edited to add: If it weren't obvious, I find this Really Freaking Useful, because it is saving me a couple thousand dollars on hiring a specialist whose chief professional responsibility is knowing that a) I need that document to complete the particular procedure I'm in and b) the quickest way to extract it from City Hall. Previously, the solution set was a) pay up, b) spend weeks researching the issue and playing ping-pong around four offices (and you're the ball), or c) buy plane tickets prior to being deported.
  - bluedanieru 15y ago
    Is this because you have a business, or has the process gotten more complicated? I've never had much trouble with Japanese immigration, although the last couple times I didn't need to do anything myself.
skarayan 15y ago
It's all about leverage, we will leverage anything and everything, including memory.
swombat 15y ago
Yes, it is an extension of memory, but it's not new. Encyclopedias have served that role for centuries. The process is simply quicker now. As it continues to accelerate (perhaps eventually becoming directly integrated into our thought processes via some kind of brain/machine interface), the distinction between "stored in your brain" and "stored in the computer/internet/etc" will become ever more blurred. Perhaps even more excitingly, there's no reason why you should have such a distinction between "computers/networks" and "human brains". Via mechanisms such as Twitter and other instant social messaging, I also have some level of access to the information stored in your brain. Eventually, we might find that the whole setup of billions of brains plugged into each other and into billions of data-rich computers gives birth to some emergent process or another... potentially scary, but fascinating.
- thomasdavis 15y ago
  Well my counter thoughts are that the difference in look up speed is big enough to make a distinction. If I read information from an encyclopedia I would be much more inclined to try remember it at the point in time. Whereas it's habitual for me to now just skim over information on the internet and store the reference point to it instead. Edit: Effectively instead of filling my memory with facts I store it with pointers to facts. Which makes it harder to put two and two together.
  - Liu 15y ago
    Perhaps we are contentiously making that tradeoff, with today's amount of knowledge you do not have time to deeply learn it all, so you instead just skim learn and store pointers for future times you might actually need it.
  - brudgers 15y ago
    >"instead of filling my memory with facts I store it with pointers to facts" [To push the analogy further] Unlike the managed memory model of the Encyclopedia, one of the problems with the internet as memory is that memory addresses are so frequently overwritten and the entire system is essentially non-redundant. This is to say that, unlike books web pages tend to change of disappear after publication breaking links and each web page is - for the vast majority of practical purposes - a unique individual manuscript rather than the product of a printing press. This makes the internet as memory suffer from amnesia as pages are rewritten, overwritten, and discarded in a matter of months even at relatively stable websites and this tendency toward frequent revision encourages a lower level of investment in the depth of data provided on the web. As a case in point, I recently found a genealogical link from 2004 which pointed to the contents of a specific box in an archive in New Jersey that contained a photograph of my great great grandfather while he was serving in Company B of the 95th Ohio Volunteers during the American Civil War. Now the page returns 404, and the search function of the archive website does not hit on my ancestor's name at all - the detailed information which was accessible from the web did not survive the intervening updates of the website. Of course my personal example hardly touches the scale at which the internet suffers from amnesia - even the deletion of Geocities is probably a tiny fraction of the information which the internet forgets at what feels like an ever increasing pace. And given the ephemeral nature of the internet's indices - it doesn't even make sense to talk of remembering a Google or Bing search page given that it is specifically constructed for a unique time, place, and consumer. If the internet is memory, then the search engines are oft-demonic homuncului who provide access.
idan 15y ago
And Marshall McLuhan strikes again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#The_global_village http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#The_global_vil...
alinajaf 15y ago
I like the way Carl Sagan described how organisms store information in Cosmos. We store all of our vital information in our DNA (i.e. how to metabolize proteins etc). What we couldn't fit in there we stored in our brains, passed on through rearing children, word of mouth and shared culture. That eventually lead to the written word and now the internet. He articulates it a lot better than I do.
FrojoS 15y ago
from the parent: My dilemma Now this can be most convenient in some circumstances because I can quickly find huge repositories of quality information. [...] But due to me not really committing information directly to my memory I have less premises to call on when thinking. I feel that my ability to be creative is impaired because all I am turning my memory into is the “Contents Page” of what I know. So instead of a novel, I am a dictionary. This is a very interesting thought. But maybe the answer will be, that some day you will have to be online, in order to think. Though, right now, this all sounds very futuristic to me. The access of information over the internet is way slower than over my memory. Not because of bandwith but by how poorly, the searched for information is presented. PS: So what are all those Star Trek Borgs standing in their boxes? Surfing the internet of course!
_shane 15y ago
It is an extension of human memory at the sacrifice of attention span.
joejohnson 15y ago
Instead of remembering information, we store pointers to that information. We just need to remember the search terms or keywords that will allow us to quickly recall the desired information. But, having knowledge organized this way leads to this: http://xkcd.com/903/ http://xkcd.com/903/
szx 15y ago
That makes a lot of sense, knowing what (little) we know about how creativity and connectivity work in the brain. Memories interact with each other and with the outside world, and that just doesn't happen when stored externally. I can definitely say I've been feeling the effects of my "hard" knowledge gradually being replaced by pointers and references in the last 15 years. And it's not just that horrible "smartphone dies -> IQ drops X points" effect, but also declining creativity - regardless of my smartphone's battery. So yeah, I agree this is probably a stage in our evolution and will be a non-problem once we upload to the net, but what can we do until then?
- thomasdavis 15y ago
  This is definitely what I was trying to communicate, thanks for verifying the essence for me!
drcube 15y ago
And Plato regretted the invention of writing because it atrophies our memory. Same thing, different millennium.

41 points by thomasdavis 15y ago

it can be...

s2r2 15y ago

For the philosophically inclined: http://consc.net/papers/extended.html http://consc.net/papers/extended.html (the famous "The Extended Mind" paper from Clark/Chalmers) (And http://philpapers.org/browse/the-extended-mind http://philpapers.org/browse/the-extended-mind for in-depth information)

thomasdavis 15y ago
I was actually trying to find resources when I was writing this but couldn't so this is very helpful, thanks! I recall reading about other mechanical devices like the steering wheel and computer mice being extensions of the human body. Does anyone know what it's called?
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  That kind of thing falls under the definition of 'cyborg,' actually. Even wearing glasses technically makes you a cyborg.
- billswift 15y ago
  I vaguely remember reading something on the Web years ago, but there are two books I know of that discuss this idea: Donald Norman's Things That Make Us Smart and Andy Clark's Natural-born Cyborgs.

jeggers5 15y ago

Always loved the concept of my mind having a direct link to the internet. Instant information and communication with ANYBOY, instantly and effortlessly.

tobylane 15y ago

No, it requires manipulation of the real world (typing and waiting), it cannot ever be categorized in the unique way each of our brains work and most of all it's not offline.

patio11 15y ago
The delta between memory and assisted memory is getting smaller over time, though. My memory of every paper I ever wrote for school and for my first day job is pretty slim. Every word I've written since that is accessible with about ten seconds of reflection and Google. Much of the important stuff is accessible on my iPad, too. (The additional accessibility of it makes it easier to re-read, which keeps it in active memory, too.) I'm in paperwork-filing mode right now for immigration. I've done it before, largely backed by paper notes. It is stressful, highly technical, and not my field. This time, I'm backed by Dropbox and my iPad. I have literally asked for a moment during discussions with clerks at town hall and then read sentences from the relevant Ministry of Justice regulations directly to them. ("I need a document proving that I have properly executed my duty to pay all forms of tax for last year, including that from $YOUR_OFFICE. Can you help me out with that? No? OK, let's see, you have a form, it is called a... one minute... Certification Of Tax Payment for City And Prefectural Taxes. I'd like to apply for that. It will cost me 250 yen, apparently. No ma'am, I believe it is quite likely you will find that form if you look. Yes ma'am, that is the one, thank you.") Do I have an encyclopedic command of obscure regulations written by a foreign government in my third language? No. But the system of myself and my technological crutches strongly gives the appearance of that. Edited to add: If it weren't obvious, I find this Really Freaking Useful, because it is saving me a couple thousand dollars on hiring a specialist whose chief professional responsibility is knowing that a) I need that document to complete the particular procedure I'm in and b) the quickest way to extract it from City Hall. Previously, the solution set was a) pay up, b) spend weeks researching the issue and playing ping-pong around four offices (and you're the ball), or c) buy plane tickets prior to being deported.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  Is this because you have a business, or has the process gotten more complicated? I've never had much trouble with Japanese immigration, although the last couple times I didn't need to do anything myself.

skarayan 15y ago

It's all about leverage, we will leverage anything and everything, including memory.

swombat 15y ago

Yes, it is an extension of memory, but it's not new. Encyclopedias have served that role for centuries. The process is simply quicker now. As it continues to accelerate (perhaps eventually becoming directly integrated into our thought processes via some kind of brain/machine interface), the distinction between "stored in your brain" and "stored in the computer/internet/etc" will become ever more blurred. Perhaps even more excitingly, there's no reason why you should have such a distinction between "computers/networks" and "human brains". Via mechanisms such as Twitter and other instant social messaging, I also have some level of access to the information stored in your brain. Eventually, we might find that the whole setup of billions of brains plugged into each other and into billions of data-rich computers gives birth to some emergent process or another... potentially scary, but fascinating.

thomasdavis 15y ago
Well my counter thoughts are that the difference in look up speed is big enough to make a distinction. If I read information from an encyclopedia I would be much more inclined to try remember it at the point in time. Whereas it's habitual for me to now just skim over information on the internet and store the reference point to it instead. Edit: Effectively instead of filling my memory with facts I store it with pointers to facts. Which makes it harder to put two and two together.
- Liu 15y ago
  Perhaps we are contentiously making that tradeoff, with today's amount of knowledge you do not have time to deeply learn it all, so you instead just skim learn and store pointers for future times you might actually need it.
- brudgers 15y ago
  >"instead of filling my memory with facts I store it with pointers to facts" [To push the analogy further] Unlike the managed memory model of the Encyclopedia, one of the problems with the internet as memory is that memory addresses are so frequently overwritten and the entire system is essentially non-redundant. This is to say that, unlike books web pages tend to change of disappear after publication breaking links and each web page is - for the vast majority of practical purposes - a unique individual manuscript rather than the product of a printing press. This makes the internet as memory suffer from amnesia as pages are rewritten, overwritten, and discarded in a matter of months even at relatively stable websites and this tendency toward frequent revision encourages a lower level of investment in the depth of data provided on the web. As a case in point, I recently found a genealogical link from 2004 which pointed to the contents of a specific box in an archive in New Jersey that contained a photograph of my great great grandfather while he was serving in Company B of the 95th Ohio Volunteers during the American Civil War. Now the page returns 404, and the search function of the archive website does not hit on my ancestor's name at all - the detailed information which was accessible from the web did not survive the intervening updates of the website. Of course my personal example hardly touches the scale at which the internet suffers from amnesia - even the deletion of Geocities is probably a tiny fraction of the information which the internet forgets at what feels like an ever increasing pace. And given the ephemeral nature of the internet's indices - it doesn't even make sense to talk of remembering a Google or Bing search page given that it is specifically constructed for a unique time, place, and consumer. If the internet is memory, then the search engines are oft-demonic homuncului who provide access.

idan 15y ago

And Marshall McLuhan strikes again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#The_global_village http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#The_global_vil...

alinajaf 15y ago

I like the way Carl Sagan described how organisms store information in Cosmos. We store all of our vital information in our DNA (i.e. how to metabolize proteins etc). What we couldn't fit in there we stored in our brains, passed on through rearing children, word of mouth and shared culture. That eventually lead to the written word and now the internet. He articulates it a lot better than I do.

FrojoS 15y ago

from the parent: My dilemma Now this can be most convenient in some circumstances because I can quickly find huge repositories of quality information. [...] But due to me not really committing information directly to my memory I have less premises to call on when thinking. I feel that my ability to be creative is impaired because all I am turning my memory into is the “Contents Page” of what I know. So instead of a novel, I am a dictionary. This is a very interesting thought. But maybe the answer will be, that some day you will have to be online, in order to think. Though, right now, this all sounds very futuristic to me. The access of information over the internet is way slower than over my memory. Not because of bandwith but by how poorly, the searched for information is presented. PS: So what are all those Star Trek Borgs standing in their boxes? Surfing the internet of course!

_shane 15y ago

It is an extension of human memory at the sacrifice of attention span.

joejohnson 15y ago

Instead of remembering information, we store pointers to that information. We just need to remember the search terms or keywords that will allow us to quickly recall the desired information. But, having knowledge organized this way leads to this: http://xkcd.com/903/ http://xkcd.com/903/

szx 15y ago

That makes a lot of sense, knowing what (little) we know about how creativity and connectivity work in the brain. Memories interact with each other and with the outside world, and that just doesn't happen when stored externally. I can definitely say I've been feeling the effects of my "hard" knowledge gradually being replaced by pointers and references in the last 15 years. And it's not just that horrible "smartphone dies -> IQ drops X points" effect, but also declining creativity - regardless of my smartphone's battery. So yeah, I agree this is probably a stage in our evolution and will be a non-problem once we upload to the net, but what can we do until then?

thomasdavis 15y ago
This is definitely what I was trying to communicate, thanks for verifying the essence for me!

drcube 15y ago

And Plato regretted the invention of writing because it atrophies our memory. Same thing, different millennium.