Calculator Culture

As technology becomes ubiquitous (everywhere and anytime), do we run the risk of losing our sense of logic and memory around health (and other issues).

For example, I bet most seniors could tell you their medicines (name, dose, cost). I was asked recently what medications I took and didn’t have a clue. (If you remember, after my visit to a clinic, I got several allergy medicines.) My immediate reaction was to type medicine into my Blackberry and see what it told me. Did I have a note or some file tracking my prescriptions? I was clueless.

(Again, maybe another business idea – a simple Personal Health Record application for the cell phone.)

There was an article in Wired Magazine’s October 2007 edition called “Your Outboard Brain Knows All” by Clive Thompson which made this exact point.

“In fact, the line between where my memory leaves off and Google picks up is getting blurrier by the second. Often when I am talking on the phone, I hit Wikipedia and search engines to explore the subject at hand, harnessing the results to buttress my arguments.”

The question of course is what happens when that’s not appropriate. Multi-tasking and relying on technology works great when you are virtual, but it is hard when you are in a face-to-face conversation to inject technology.

Maybe some day when we are all “bionic people” with some robotics this could work.

(In case you don’t get the calculator culture title…the point is that people are less likely to know their basic math if they grow up doing even basic calculations with a calculator.)