How many phone numbers do you know by heart right now?
I know two. One belongs to the house where I lived as a child, and the other is my current number.
The childhood number no longer connects to anything I know. The house is gone, and the number has probably been given to someone else. It has been useless to me for more than twenty years, yet it remains.
I do not know a single number for the people I contact every day.
This Time, Something Is Different
Almost no one sees this as a loss anymore. The counterargument that memory has always been kept outside ourselves is valid too.
Writing, paper, books, photographs. Humanity has continually moved memory out of the body. The same worries arose each time, and each time they mostly proved unfounded.
But this time, the kind of thing being moved is different.
What We Moved Was Judgment, Not Memory
Books stored memory.
To use it, I had to search, read, reconcile the context, and compare it with other books. Storage was outside, but judgment remained inside.
What is moving now is that judgment.
Scroll horizontally to view a wide table.
| Before | Now |
|---|---|
| Open a map and choose a route | A route is calculated for you |
| Browse a bookstore and decide what to read | Recommendations appear |
| Write the first sentence on a blank screen | A draft appears |
| Read multiple sources and draw a conclusion | A summary and conclusion are presented together |
Each is a convenience. Considered individually, there is little reason to object.
Combined, they become something different. The entire process of gathering the materials for judgment, comparing them, getting things wrong, and revising happens outside us. I receive the result.
The Issue Is the Grounds for Judgment, Not Ability
The familiar worry is that ‘our abilities will deteriorate.’ I do not think that is the central issue.
Using calculators did not make us incapable of mathematics. Freed from hand calculations, we went on to tackle more complex things.
Something else concerns me more.
Becoming unable to explain why I made a particular judgment.
In the past, the path to a conclusion existed inside me. When I was wrong, I could retrace where I had gone wrong. Ah, I misread something at the third step.
Now I receive only the conclusion, while its grounds remain outside. To retrace them, I have to ask again, and there is no guarantee that the explanation I get then matches the original reasoning.
This is not a problem of memory. It is a problem of responsibility.
Can I call a judgment my own if I cannot explain it?
Still, We Cannot Go Back
Jumping from here to ‘so let’s stop using it’ would be lazy. We cannot go back, and there is no reason to.
One pattern repeats in the history of adopting technology. Those who acknowledge that something is lost use it better.
Writing did weaken the art of memorization. We chose writing anyway because the gains were greater. What mattered was choosing with an awareness of what we were losing.
So I try to keep three practices.
One. Preserve the grounds, rather than just the conclusion.
I do not simply save the answer a tool gives me. I add a line explaining why I accepted it. Later, that single line is all I can retrace. I can receive the answer again, but I cannot receive my judgment from that moment again.
Two. Leave room to get things wrong.
If I always follow the optimal route, an internal map never forms. I reach the destination every time, yet never come to know the neighborhood.
So in unimportant matters, I deliberately accept inefficiency. Something as simple as taking a different route along a familiar journey. That is the cost of keeping my instincts alive.
Three. Keep certain judgments inside.
Judgments about people. Decisions that will endure. Choices that cannot be reversed.
These I make within myself, even if it is slow. Slowness is the point. A decision made quickly and one held for a long time carry different weights when the time comes to live with them.
The Question That Remains
If there is a line between placing memory outside myself and placing myself outside myself, where might it be?
I do not know the answer yet.
But I think I need at least to know that the line exists, so I can notice if I cross it one day.
Losing something knowingly is different from losing it without realizing.
Perhaps maintaining that difference is about all we can do right now.
Like the number I still remember more than twenty years after it lost its use, what remains usually does not remain because it is needed. It remains because we have held on to it for a long time.
