Offloading memory.

You may have see this cartoon making the rounds:

Maybe we should include the human brain among the aggrieved parties.

I have been racking my own dollar-store brain to remember what provider or computer outfit did the cell phone commercial some years ago in which a bunch of old guys in a bar are arguing sports trivia, and then a nerdish youth corrects them using information off his mobile phone. He astonishes the yahoos by pulling in the answers from the atmosphere. If you remember any details about it, please let me know. All I remember is that the young fellow had a face that looked like it could use a fist.

Considering today's topic, it's funny that I have not been able to find the commercial using the search engines. The problem is that all the search terms I come up with lead me to current ads and other more popular (or promoted) content. But I remember that ad, because it struck a chord. We all know that human memory plays tricks, and that the Internet contains every bit of sports trivia known to man.

When that commercial first aired, the magic of the Internet had been in play for a while, and we knew we could use it to answer all things -- but not while getting hammered at the bar. You had to use your computer to access the Internet. Sometimes buffering was involved. Prior to the information age, the bad memory of drunks was required to bring forth data -- or, for the well-prepared innkeeper, the Guinness Book of Records.

That worthy book, which became popular far beyond its humble origins (the managing director of the eponymous brewery's argument over what game bird in Europe was the fastest), was a staple in bars and homes for decades. For sports fans who liked to argue there were books like The Baseball Encyclopedia. Now, especially when Internet access is as far away as your shirt pocket, we tend to leave our memory up to the World Wide Web. Memorization is, in other words, for squares. And maybe for good reason.

"If I could remember everything I ever read," a friend once said (while drinking), "I'd be God." Exaggeration aside, I knew what he meant. It is frustrating to realize how much we forget of what we read. The joy of encountering a remembered book anew is nice, but not worth the loss of all the information that falls out of our heads when we are doing other things. I'm reading a book about the Battle of the Bulge now, one that is well researched and so contains lots of German names, and town and other place names, and I forget who and what everything is. A Generalfeldmarschall might disappear for twenty pages, and by the time he reemerges I've forgotten which one he is. I'd rather have some memory of him than have to look him up.

For so many things, memory is optional -- Dr. Internet will see you now. But even for those of us suffering from CRS, reliance on devices to inform our memories doesn't seem like a good idea. Does memory improve with training, as Harry Lorayne says? If so, we are in trouble. We're using memory less, thanks to the very devices accused of shortening our attention spans. Maybe we are getting dumber!

It doesn't help that when we do look things up, we tend to go straight to Wikipedia, which is not exactly gospel truth.

Anyway, the kid in the commercial reeling off sports trivia at the bar and annoying his elders would get his comeuppance later when he discovered another thing the smartphone was good for: drunk texting. Good luck talking to your girlfriend in the morning, bub.