Google Is Replacing Your Memory
When you learn something, you don’t burn the information into your brain like a hard drive, but rather map the neural pathway of sensory, motor, and abstract activity occurring at that moment. Thus, in recalling a memory you are actually reliving an identical brain state as when it was encoded, while at the same time adding new details from the present. And when you don’t recall a memory very often, your brain slowly scrubs off the older, more inane details as if de-fragging the whole system. This is a good thing, called transience, that the brain does anyway, allowing for more space to store information.
But when that process invariably starts with “Google it,” it presents a problem when trying recall information found through the search engine. For one, the brain likes to conserve energy, and it’s much more likely to remember the spoils of a whole day in the library archives than an answer provided provided after mere seconds while procrastinating. The even stranger extrapolation of this is that the brain doesn’t remember facts so much as it remembers where to find them. So as long as you never have to worry about Google being unavailable, you never have to dedicate brain space to remembering anything Google can tell you.