My wife recently treated herself to an I-Phone and MacBook Pro computer. She has extended her memory to the internet allowing her to explore ideas, places, and events. She has access to applications (“apps”) that allow her to calculate, argue, plan, and daydream. She can also use these devices as memory collaborators. She can track as well as have auditory reminders for appointments. She can pay bills, organize her life, and record events (pictures and videos) that we want to remember. She is delighted. Her I-Phone and computer work for her in the words of David Chalmers as an “extended mind.”

Smart phones and computers serve as memory collaborators for many individuals as well as organizations. They have replaced paper calendars and people whose job it is to remind those for whom they work. On the one hand, they allow us to multitask better. On the other hand, they force us to multitask more often. The Achilles’ heel of memory is multitasking. For example, consider remembering to pick up milk on the way home from work tonight or take a medication at 4PM. Now I can be sure to remember by setting a smart phone to chime at the time I will leave work or at 4:00 and remind me to pick up milk or take my medication. These are examples of the upside. However, smart phones also add to my memory load as now I can constantly be reminded of a new e-mail by a different chime. There have become so many interruptions of my train of thought. I don’t answer my phone when I am with a client or in the middle of a talk.

Computers are thought by some to extend our working memory to make our mind and memory more efficient. Working memory is roughly the human memory system that multitasks. Maggie Jackson (Distracted, 2009) describes our working memory as similar to the news headline crawl which is “constantly updated, never more than a snippet, and no looking back.” But memory is based on more than unlimited access to new information. With the advent of computers and smart phones we can now create and have instant access to information at a rate that far exceeds our ability to find, review, understand, and recall the information. We live in what Richard Wurtman (Information Anxiety, 2001) named the age of information anxiety.

Computers and smart phones are good. They are very helpful forms of mind and memory collaboration. Indeed, I am getting close to obtaining some kind of smart phone to help me keep up better as I still use a paper calendar. As an expert on human memory my concern is that the newly developing technology presents a risk. Human memory evolved thousands of years ago and is not structured around information technology. Maggie Jackson stated my fear best. “The way we live is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention – the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress.” Let’s not forget a corollary the one minute rule that underlies human memory: anything given less than at least one minute of focused thought will fade from memory.