#92. Memory

Memories are usually a nostalgic ideal we go to when we want to invoke certain emotions in ourselves. However, today I intend to use the nostalgia to drive a deeper point about the human brain and its novel capability to think, collect and memorise information. We evaluate this diminishing facet of life and try to predict how evolution might just take this capability away from us.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

– Elie Wiesel

Who didn’t enjoy school? Most of us look back at our school days with fond memories. Some of us might not have relished the time then, but at least in retrospect, those days appear to be some of the most replay-able moments of our lives. And since all of us are unique in our own ways, everyone has their own, personalised highlight reel from that era. Some of us were sports fanatics, some were academic geniuses and some were debating connoisseurs.

However, today, I would like for us to recollect a portion which wasn’t pleasant then, and appears to be a waste of time even now. I am talking about examinations. Remember the hustle in the week prior (of in some of our cases a day prior) to the final exams? It was rife with committing what appeared to be the most random collection of items one could drum up. All of that, in an attempt to vomit on to the answer sheet during the three most dreaded hours in a students lifetime.

I can practically hear a collective sigh when people regain consciousness from our little visualisation exercise, signifying relief due to the fact that we don’t have to do it anymore. I get it, at the time, it appeared there was no use of memorising random facts about signatures that were made to treaties that did not impact our daily lives. And don’t even get me started on the most complex calculus problems we solved, for which the efforts appear to be completely futile, since they don’t have any contributions to our work or personal lives.

But what if I told you that the apparent image of futility in this instance is completely deceiving? What if I told you that all the time we spent memorising random pieces of knowledge was not a waste of time after all? And what if I told you that the future generations are potentially going to squander one of the most precious capabilities of the human mind?

By now everyone must have connected the dots, I am talking about the human brain’s power of memorisation. A good chunk of us have been led to believe, specifically in the recent years, that memorisation no longer serves a purpose in the age of freely flowing data and information. And there is strong correlation between this belief and the current landscape of knowledge work and studies. Cannot remember something? Well, a response (accurate or otherwise) is just a couple of screen taps away.

Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Deepseek (or any other name, pick your poison) should by now by declared a supplement to whatever limited level of memories we have retained in our minds, and consequently, we don’t feel the need to remember anything anymore. In an earlier day and age, libraries and books served a similar purpose. The easiest example I can think of is the dictionary, which was referred to every time we came across a new word or a word for which we could not recollect the meaning.

However, there is a stark difference between the two media. Books are way too simple a stimulus for our brains, and the brain needs to slow down to almost a static level to get the information and then register it to itself. Screens, however, are a completely different ballgame.

Our brain, for what it’s worth, is way overstimulated as it is, needs to increase its speed and keep up with the constant bombarding of ads, links and distractions (think cat videos) to 1. end up on the right page and then 2. read and register the information. Finally with the highly diminished attention span we have, we end up procrastinating and rationalising not knowing something by thinking the information will be there later when we need it.

As a result, not only are we consciously not remembering anything, we are destroying our ability to committing anything to memory, period. And that is not a good thing, because like everything that nature has blessed us with, memory has a very wide and important use case for not just our survival, but the existence of the human race as a whole.

Let me explain with an example: what if the early man did not remember fire is hot and not to be touched? All because he had so much more going on in his mind that he just did not get the mental bandwidth to remember this simple fact? Or what if after realising that it is difficult to breathe under water, the early man just decided to play with his (stone) tablet and not imprint in his memory to identify an alternate means to cross the river?

Well, I hear you. These are ridiculous examples extended to a morbid degree, but the simpler use cases would just not have cut it today. Elementary pieces of information like phone numbers needed in case of an emergency or credit card information for making payments are not that hard to remember. But again, we are constantly told that the brain is not meant to store information, it is supposed to make decisions. Plus, doesn’t my cell phone have everything I need?

Well, it does, but what if tomorrow I don’t have my phone on me, and I need to make a phone call? Or what if I need to make an urgent payment because my life depends on it?

I know this 5 minute article is not going to change the trajectory of the future generations. But I worry that evolution might take its course and the brain may evolve in a way that it may no longer have the ability to remember anything, since we are just not using that portion of the brain anymore.

Enjoy your ability to memorise things, for the ability might not exist in the future.

Ask the value of memories from Alzheimer’s patients and people who lost them due to other physical or mental reasons. I urge everyone who is reading it to not continue to be slaves to your 6 inch electronic devices.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one. 🙂