I Google, therefore I may be losing the ability to concentrate

and another excerpt...

The article goes into more detail. The article coincides with my own personal experience. I've always been good at constructing search queries (I used to work on databases) but I also used to have a good memory. Now I find myself coming up with keywords I need to google something instead of remembering the fact itself. Anyone else find this common?

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nc20080702a1.html

Is the title an attempt at being clever, or just an extremely ironic misspelling of the word "dumber?"

My long term memory is pretty brilliant.... I generally don't use google to remember things though.

My short term memory has never been great.

i think he misspelled the word dumber on purpose to see if we would notice

You've read enough of my posts. I'm guessing you're asking a rhetorical question.

I disagree completely. In the past I have taken for granted many urban legends and fallacies. I find myself stating something that is just some rumor I heard when I was a kid. Like that daddy long legs are the most poisonous spider in the world; their fangs are just too small to penetrate human skin.

Well....with a little time with Google that myth is certainly destroyed.

Suggesting that Google makes people dumb would be like suggesting tat the library makes people dumb. Granted, people used to remember all of their oral histories....but in today's changing world that oral history and that wealth of information is getting so large than only the autistic or severely gifted geniuses could hope to store it all.

Google is your friend...just stay away from the pornz.

I use QI to dispell commonly believed myths.

Tit for tat, my good chum.

Whatever QI is...the point still stands. Google doesn't posess the information. It simply tells you where to get it.

@ Montana.....teh, taht, tat: these are my nemises. And I face them every day. I will speak to my spell checker about the matter....but frankly...it sucks.

What it is saying, is that instead of remembering content, we now remember how to find it using search engines.

In a way it is true. Search engines have done to knowledge what the calculator has to mental calculation. But in a way we are better off since we can now concentrate more effort on thinking our ideas through rather then on documenting them (while at the same time increasing the level of documentation). Before the internet, how often would people ask for the source of someone's statement?

Anyways, try http://ixquick.com/ . It's a search engine that doesn't log anything about you.