This was an interesting story I saw at Reuters today:

According to a survey released Friday, the boom in mobiles and portable devices that store reams of personal information has created a generation incapable of memorizing simple things.

I’ve never been very good at remembering birthdays. It’s taken me over ten years to finally get the date right of my best friend Cindy’s birthday. It’s worse for my brothers. Although I do remember their birthdays, I still manage to forget to send a card.

My memory is getting a little more faulty each year, but I don’t have a problem in remembering the past. Of course, there is a bit of friction between my brothers and I because in a shared memory, my memory isn’t quite the same as theirs. This is something I’ve learned to just not argue with them. They’re both very stubborn men, and who needs to argue over something like that?

Of course, different parties remembering an event with subtle differences, isn’t part of growing old, or due to us relying upon technology for our memories. Police investigations have widely shown for years that the more witnesses to a crime that you interview, the more the details will change. It is in this minutiae of the details that a crime is solved.

It’s a little disturbing that we’re beginning to lose our memory, not from age, but from apathy. I don’t think that’s a very good trend. Computers, cell phones, ipods, blackberries, etc., can be lots of fun and they can be very handy in helping you in aiding your memory. When it becomes a matter of replacing your memory; when you’re just entering data into your cellphone and not even putting forth an effort to remember that data, that’s laziness. Indulging in that kind of laziness leads to laziness elsewhere in your life.

Here’s where I’ve seen another example of apathy aided by technology; groups of teenagers that still hang out with each other. Doesn’t seem all that different from when we were their age. Going to the mall, eating junk food or watching a movie. However, in those groups of kids I see these days, they may be together, but they aren’t interacting with each other. Most of them are on a cellphone, talking at length to someone who isn’t with the group. Another has himself wired up to a mini-computer and surfing the internet. I wonder if he evens sees the traffic passing around him, much less his companions. Two others kids have earphones in their ears listening to ipods, their heads and bodies bouncing to different beats.

What is this doing to their social skills? What kind of memories will they have? If they can take a laptop into school to record lectures and take notes, how much of that is actually getting memorized and are they even learning?

My mother, who was a teacher in the 50s and has been a substitute teacher for the last 20 years in Monterey definately sees a difference in trying to teach something to today’s teen. They have problems with short attention spans (that get blamed on ADD or ADHD), lack of discipline causes many teachers to wind up just babysitting a class instead of actually teaching. Teachers have to compete against the allowance of laptops (which are now required in many schools) cellphones, ipods, and other forms of technological handicaps and diversions.

I remember a favorite teacher who, when he decided to retire early, left us with this caustic remark, “We’re raising a generation of dummies and I no longer have the desire to add to the problem.”

That was in 1979.

Technology is great, but what are we losing because of it?

** Try out your memory with some of the Test and Quizzes.