Memories Are Not What They Used to Be July 14, 2016 reposted here

When was the last time you had to memorize a telephone number?

for me it was jut this last year as my old phone broke and i had to go get a new one the company 

I had at the time wanted to charge me $250 dollars for the new phone and service plan so I went to another company. I finally found what I was looking for $150 dollars not what I wanted to pay but 

felt I had to pay to get a new phone and number. Now i finally got it memorized after almost six 

months of having it.

For thousands of years, human beings have relied on stone tablets, scrolls, books or 

Post-it notes to remember things that their minds cannot retain, but there is something 

profoundly different about the way we remember and forget in the internet age. It is not 

only our memory of facts that is changing. Our episodic memory, the mind’s ability to 

relive past experiences — the surprising sting of an old humiliation revisited, the thrill 

and discomfort of a first kiss, those seemingly endless childhood summers — is 

affected, too.

I now spend an average of almost nine to twelve hours a day staring at my phone, computer, Ipad, 

or television, and when more of our lives are lived on screen, more of our memories will be formed 

there. We are recording more about ourselves and our experiences than ever before, and though 

in the past this required deliberate effort, such as sitting down to write a diary, or filing away a 

letter, or posing for a portrait, today this process can be effortless, even unintentional. Never 

before have people had access to such accurate personal histories — and so little power to rewrite them.