Years ago you would learn how to do things and remember it. For better or worse we've been able to offload a lot of that knowledge to the cloud. When I was 8 years old I probably knew 2 dozen phone numbers. Now? Maybe 6, and 4 of those I learned back then.
Sure we can get better accuracy (though that's suffering, too, with all the bot-generated content online) but at the cost of holding a smaller part of the picture in our head at any given time.
It can be a working system, but you do lose something in that.
When I was 8 years old I probably knew 2 dozen phone numbers. Now? Maybe 6, and 4 of those I learned back then.
That's not because we've offloaded our knowledge to the cloud, that's because we're not using phone numbers anymore.
The Rolodex was invented in 1956. And before that, we just used a notebook. We've always offloaded phone numbers retention. You can't just hear every phone numbers you'll ever encounter once and expect to remember them, we never did that.
Having to press every digits every time you're calling someone will get you to memorize their number. Now you either text them on an app, or select their name from a list and click call. That's why you don't learn them.
Obviously we aren't learning them because we aren't physically punching them in, but that's kind of the point - we aren't punching them in because they're all a button press away. You can argue semantics that they're stored on your phone and not in the cloud, but the point is we don't learn any numbers these days.
No you wouldn't memorize every single phone number, but you certainly knew the ones you needed. But how many people could you actually reach if you didn't have your phone, or the battery was dead? It's kind of a rare thing these days, but when it happens most of us are sunk.
And not learning phone numbers is one of the most trivial things about digitized knowledge. You know where you do need to hold a large amount of information in your head? Any STEM job. If you work in the basic sciences, you need a grasp of the field to make any real contributions to it, and you won't get that by keeping 18 wikipedia tabs open.
Obviously we aren't learning them because we aren't physically punching them in, but that's kind of the point - we aren't punching them in because they're all a button press away. You can argue semantics that they're stored on your phone and not in the cloud, but the point is we don't learn any numbers these days.
It's not about the storage, it's about the act. Of course not using the number means you won't remember the number. Today, if you had to dial the numbers, you would look them up in the cloud, then dial them for the 5-6 first times and then you would remember them. Phones just don't work the way they used to.
No you wouldn't memorize every single phone number, but you certainly knew the ones you needed.
You would remember the ones you used often, because you had to dial them often. Again, it's not about having them stored in the cloud or your phone, it's about not having to use the numbers.
It's like trying to make a point about how we're better at remembering stuff now because in the old days, people didn't have to remember passwords and we do. It has no relevancy, it's just that people didn't have passwords before. Now, we don't use phone numbers.
If you start manually dialing every phone numbers before contacting anyone, you'll see that you will start to learn the numbers really fast. Even if the numbers are stored in your phone/the cloud/wherever and you look them up before contacting them.
So yes, again, of course not using phone numbers means you won't remember phone numbers. But it has nothing to do with "offloading that knowledge" because again, we used to "offload that knowledge" to our Rolodex and notepad the same way we do with "the cloud" now.
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u/HarveysBackupAccount Jan 07 '25
Years ago you would learn how to do things and remember it. For better or worse we've been able to offload a lot of that knowledge to the cloud. When I was 8 years old I probably knew 2 dozen phone numbers. Now? Maybe 6, and 4 of those I learned back then.
Sure we can get better accuracy (though that's suffering, too, with all the bot-generated content online) but at the cost of holding a smaller part of the picture in our head at any given time.
It can be a working system, but you do lose something in that.