Search engines, social media and email have become our external hard drives for memory storage. We don’t remember phone numbers, addresses or anything else that can be easily retrieved. Facebook sends us birthday reminders without asking.
This shift in how we process and compartmentalize information is being called Google brain, the Google effect and digital amnesia. And there’s nothing wrong with saving your brain for more meaningful tasks than rote recall, Chapman says.
But there is a troubling rewiring of the brain that can be brought on by relying on instant access. We’re chipping away at our ability to think deep thoughts, innovate and take time to smell the coffee.
“Nobody reads in depth anymore,” says Chapman, who holds a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from UTD. “Google brain is constant distraction. It’s brought to us this need to be entertained with snapshot imaging. People jump from one search to the next, never stay on track and lose retention.
“Google brain is a thin, fuzzy notion of ideas but no real depth of thinking.”
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搜索引擎、社交媒體和電子郵件已經成為我們記憶的外置硬碟儲存體，我們不再需要記電話號碼、地址或其他容易提取的資訊，而像Facebook這種社交媒體更會自動發出生日提示給我們。
我們稱這種信息處理和劃分的轉變為Google大腦，Google效應及數碼失憶症。Chapman表示，省去這些生硬的記憶，將大腦留作處理更有意義的事情本來是沒有問題。
然而，缺乏可以即時提取的資訊，我們的大腦可能要重新佈線，這將會是一個嚴重的問題。這樣下去，我們深入思考的能力和創新的能力會被一天一天的蠶食，連聞咖啡都可能要一段時間才有反應。
Chapman，這位美國德克薩斯州大學達拉斯分校的神經學博士認爲，「再沒有人會深入閱讀。Google大腦會持續干擾我們，它讓我們產生對影像快照的不斷需求，人們衹會由一個網頁跳到另一個網頁，不再保留記錄，并很快就忘記掉。」
「Google大腦非常單薄，提供的概念模糊，更不要說真正的思考深度了。」