Your Brain as an Index

Occasionally, I hope to delve into a few topics related to librarianship, as I am studying at the Drexel University iSchool for a Masters degree in Library and Information Science.

Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan and The Daily Dish, I saw this blog post by Peter Suderman @ The American Scene postulating how Google is tranforming our brains into indexes.

Money quote from Your Brain as an Index:

Why memorize the content of a single book when you could be using your
brain to hold a quick guide to an entire library? Rather than memorize
information, we now store it digitally and just remember what we stored —
resulting in what David Brooks called “the outsourced brain.” We won’t become books, we’ll become their indexes and reference guides, permanently holding on to rather little deep knowledge, preferring instead to know what’s known, by ourselves and others, and where that knowledge is stored.

This is an interesting concept which I would like to explore further. As I get older I am less and less interested in memorization, and more interested in quick and easy access to information, so on an anecdotal level Suderman's comment rings true.

Comments?

P.L.