Apparently there’s a new research study out suggesting that people don’t remember things as well if they know they can look the information up later on Google. This set off a spate of media reports on the predictable theme that technology is bad for our brains, e.g.: http://techland.time.com/2011/07/15/is-google-really-wrecking-our-memory/.

I got an email from a reporter, Rachelle Dragani from ECT News Network, this morning and got a chance to chip in on the other side:
http://www.ectnews.com/story/72879.html

My point was that since we don’t remember everything, choosing to put more effort into remembering things we can’t look up online is pretty adaptive actually. I also threw in a reference to the Flynn effect and my opinion that Google is making us smarter by giving us more access to more information. But those didn’t make it into the short report.