According to a study by Trinity Collge in Dublin, people in their 30’s who have been relying on mobile phones, PDAs and similar gadgets remember their home telephone numbers, birthdays of friends & relatives worse than older people in their 50’s. The Telegraph:
“But the less you use of your memory, the poorer it becomes. This may be reflected in the survey findings which show that the over 50s who grew up committing more to memory report better performance in many areas than those under 30 who are heavily reliant on technology to act as their day to day aide memoir.â€
I don’t think this is dangerous or bad in any sense, except in the random and trivial sense of finding yourself without power in the gift shop. Human cognition lives outside the brain, in the whole of organism + environment + culture.
Now, imagine that there is free wifi in the cities and people have wifi terminals in their pockets. Wikipedia is accessible almost all the time. What does that do to cognition?
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It gives freedom to rethinking and it gives respond-ability (responsibility).
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