internet as transactional memory, atrophying individual memory?

Nothing groundbreaking, but a [really nice description](http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/07/study-why-bother-to-remember-when-you-can-just-use-google.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss) of [how the networked and shared access](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/07/13/science.1207745.abstract) to all information ever captured is shaping our individual memory and information retrieval strategies.

Or something. I don’t have the attention span to actually read the article. Or the short article summarizing the article. Or, really, to write a proper blog post about the short article summarizing the article.

I know I think of memory first as query structures. I’d be hooped if teh googel went down.

From [Kyle Niemeyer’s summary of the article](http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/07/study-why-bother-to-remember-when-you-can-just-use-google.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss):
>The results from all four experiments suggest that people expect computerized information to be continuously available, and actually remember less when they know they’ll have access to it later. We also seem to remember where we can find information instead of the information itself.

Duh. Again, this isn’t exactly a novel finding. But having some experimental data showing how we remember and search for stuff will come in handy.