Quick Thought on Memorization in the Age of Technology

I may be showing my age more than normal, but here goes nothing...

I was thinking today-- Remember when you were a kid and it was vitally important to your social life that you memorize each and every phone number of all of your friends and family? If you forgot one or two, you could be completely cut out of your middle school social circle.

You had to be able to act fast when returning calls from call waiting-- or when conferencing a 3rd friend into a call.

Nowadays, kids (and me too) barely know their home phone number, much less the phone numbers of their friends and family. They've got all the numbers safely stored away in their cell phones, on Facebook, and in their address books on Outlook.

The most important thing to look for when buying a new cell phone is whether or not the new phone can accept a memory card from the old one. Gawd forbid that we actually have to type in a phone number more than once, if ever.

I've found often times that if someone wants me to have their phone number, they'll call me and I will just save the number under their name. So, it's possible I may never type in a phone number!

What I do memorize however is WEB SITES. Since I consistently work on 3 different computers (not to mention friends or co-workers computers), I can't count on always having my bookmarks. Besides, those or the history in my web browser could easily become erased and leave me completely cut off from my existing social circle.

I mean, what would life be like if I couldn't read what restaurant Paul has tried lately? And how's Shelain doing these days with her photography business?

One way I help this situation is by putting links along the right hand side bar of my site. But with all the sites that I stay on top of, I just can't help but memorize them with the same passion that I was memorizing phone numbers with just 20 years ago!

...Just my thoughts...