Is the Internet an extension of human memory? | Hacker News Reader

Is the Internet an extension of human memory?

thomasdavis.github.com

41 pointsthomasdavis26 comments

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.

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.

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.

>"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.

I'll conclude by asking:

How is that different from the way your own brain stores memory? Do you really think your brain is like a hard drive, storing permanently without rewriters, amnesia and other dysfunctions?

I suspect the two are rather similar...

My brain has redundant pathways to memories and almost certainly stores memories in multiple locations. However, the primary comparison was not to brains but to encyclopedias or books (in keeping with ancestor comments) specifically and other technological artifacts in general.

And therefore, books are more akin to the permanent storage devices such as disks you mention (though tending to be far more persistent).

Generally speaking, It is my belief that computers are not significantly more isomorphic with brains than windmills and any conclusion that there are homuncului should be taken as a reductio ad absurdum against an isomorphism between brains and the internet.

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.

For the philosophically inclined: http://consc.net/papers/extended.html (the famous "The Extended Mind" paper from Clark/Chalmers)

(And http://philpapers.org/browse/the-extended-mind for in-depth information)

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?

That kind of thing falls under the definition of 'cyborg,' actually. Even wearing glasses technically makes you a cyborg.

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.

And Marshall McLuhan strikes again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#The_global_vil...

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!

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

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?

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

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/

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

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.

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.

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.

Short version: Japan is optimized for salarymen.

Let's not go around throwing words like 'real world' around so casually, less you wish your mind to exist in a fantasy plane of existence. And if you want to get silly about it, typing and waiting is just neuron activation, and I imagine there is plenty of firing and waiting going on when we remember.

If you wish to define human memory as only the information retrieval within our own brain, then there is no argument against your case. However, it raises other questions such as exactly where we set the distinction. Does it mean that the memory must be stored in the biological structure of the brain (meaning whatever we are born with), or just whatever is physically inside our head (maybe one day we can graft memory boosters in there).

And what if somehow we train our memories/brains and some external system to be able to cue off each other? Perhaps some sort of direct neural interface where a partial memory and trigger an external stimulus and that then triggers the full memory faster (better?). Then does the external system become an extension of human memory? It may not increase our information storage capacity, but it would improve recall.

Anyhow, it's all fun semantics and fantasy at this point. One day...

Well yes.. If you think of Google as tape libraries[1] and your brain as RAM, then the difference is many orders of magnitude. Brain memory boosters would be like having SSDs on thunderbolt (possible in computing, not in brain surgery). It is right to say words like real world, more so than words like one day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_storage#Tertiary_stora...

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

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

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