Human civilisation has always been scared of forgetting
By Syed Tahir Rashdi
A time ago before the first computer, the first library or even the first book people thought memory was the most important thing for knowledge. Whole societies relied on it. People remembered laws and stories by heart. Passed them down to their children. To remember something was not just to recall facts it was to keep your identity, culture and history alive.
A time ago in ancient Greece people started to worry about memory.
In a book called “Phaedrus” Socrates tells a story about a god named Theuth. Theuth invented writing. Thought it would make people wiser and help them remember more.. The king of Egypt, Thamus did not agree. He said that writing would actually make peoples memories weaker. People would start to rely on written words of trying to remember things themselves. They would think they know something just because they can read it. They would not really understand it.
Course that is not what happened. Writing did not hurt society it changed it. Books became a way to store knowledge and share ideas with people all over the world.
Socrates was worried about something that is still important today.
The question now is not whether we remember things because of books.
It is whether we remember anything all.
Today we have information stored somewhere than ever before. Our phones remember our conversations. Computers store our photos forever. We can find answers to questions in seconds. Machines can summarise books. Help us find information fast.
Never before has much information existed outside of our own minds.
This is a change in how people relate to knowledge.
A man named Marshall McLuhan said that every new technology is like an extension of our abilities. The wheel is like an extension of our feet. The telescope is like an extension of our eyes. By that logic our phones are like an extension of our memories.
They help us remember things.
The problem is obvious.
As we get better at storing information outside of our minds we get worse at remembering things ourselves. We do not remember phone numbers because our phones do. We do not remember birthdays because our computers do. We do not remember how to get places because our phones tell us. We are not trying to remember things much as we used to.
We are just looking them up.
That small change might be one of the most important things that has happened to our minds in the past century.
It is easy to see why we like to store information outside of our minds. Who would want to go to using paper maps or big books to find answers? Digital technology has made it easy for everyone to get information. We can find things out in seconds that used to take days.
The question is not whether this is useful.
It is whether it is changing our minds in some way.
Some psychologists did a study in 2011. Found out something interesting. They found out that when people know they can find information easily they do not try to remember it much. They just remember where to find it.
This is a deal.
Our minds are changing from storing information to finding it.
We are getting better at finding the path. Not the destination.
This is not a habit it is how we think. Remembering things is not about storing facts it is about using them to make decisions to imagine things and to be creative. When we remember things we can connect them in ways and have new ideas.
When we store information outside of our minds that changes.
A man named Nicholas Carr said that digital technology is not just changing how we get information it is changing how we think. The internet is great at giving us answers. It is not so good at helping us really understand things. If we get used to getting answers we might not be as good at thinking deeply about things.
This does not mean that technology is making us less smart.
It means that our intelligence is changing.
The problem is not that we do not know things.
It is that we are too dependent on technology to remember them for us.
A student might think that they can just look up answers and not really learn anything. A professional might rely much on reminders that they do not even try to remember things. Machines are getting better at remembering things for us. That might mean we do not have to try as hard.
Slowly remembering things is becoming more like looking them up.
Knowledge is becoming about getting access to information.
Thinking is becoming more about getting things done.
Technology has definitely helped us store information than ever before.
The question is whether it is also making us less likely to try to remember things ourselves.
Memory is not just about storing information.
It is about how we experience life.
A computer can store every document ever written. A machine can look up every photo ever taken.. They cannot turn experience into wisdom. Our memories are not just storage they are how we interpret things. We forget some things we remember others. We use them to understand ourselves.
A writer named Jorge Luis Borges wrote a story about a man who could remember everything.. This gift was actually a curse. The man could not forget anything so he could not think about things in a way. He was trapped by his memory. Borges was saying that forgetting is not a thing it is actually necessary for thought.
This is not about how we think as individuals.
It is about how we learn and how we understand ourselves as a society.
Education used to be about more than learning facts. It was about learning how to think. If we just store information outside of our minds education might just become about looking things up.
The same thing applies to our society.
Every society relies on shared memories. We keep records, histories and monuments because they help us remember who we are. If we forget our past we do not just lose information we lose perspective.
The digital age has stored information than any other time in history.
It has also made it easy to forget things. Yesterdays news is replaced by todays notifications. History is not just competing with people who want to deny it.
It is competing with distractions.
This is the problem with technology and memory.
We have made machines that can remember perfectly. We might be creating a culture that remembers less deeply.
This is not an argument against technology. Every new technology has changed how we remember things. Digital memory has made it easier for us to learn and access information.
The problem is not with the technology.
It is with how we think about it.
We need to decide whether we will use technology to help our minds or replace them.
Because the biggest danger of technology is not that machines will remember everything.
It is that we will forget that memory is not about storing the past.
It is, about helping us imagine the future.
(The writer is a Shahdadpur-based contributing columnist, book reviewer, and climate change activist. He holds a BS degree in Pakistan Studies from University of Sindh and can be reached at syedtahir926@gmail.com.)
