Really, Doctor?

This afternoon I was reading an article about a new scientific study concerning people's ability to remember. Basically, the article was saying that with the rise of smart phones and the Internet being so easy to get to for people to find a quick answer, people have stopped actually learning facts if they don't feel they will be asked to remember them later. Basically, nobody remembers anything anymore unless they are worried about being tested on it. Their phone knows where the restaurant is, so why should they? (It is the death of the office know-it-all.) And I can't say this study is wrong. Honestly, I don't remember phone numbers anymore. If I didn't either learn it before the age of 20 or dial it so much that it became burned into my brain, then there is no chance in hell I'm going to be able to get in touch with you if I lose my phone. While I would hardly call this study a scientific break-through, that is not my main issue with the article. My problem is that I already heard this exact same rant a couple months back in a comedy bit.

Comedian Pete Holmes talked about this exact phenomenon on a Comedy Central special. He said that thanks to Google everybody knows everything, but no one actually knows anything. People may be able to tell you the answer to your question, but only because they looked it up on Wikipedia in ten seconds and not because they were smart or simply retained that information in their brain. Also, he said that a byproduct of this people were being robbed of that feeling you get when you are the only person in a room who knows that Tom Petty was born in Florida. (See, useless study? I remembered that entire comedy bit without even looking it up. Clearly, my brain remembers the really important issues.)

That aside, mostly this article makes me sad for the scientists of America. Is this really they best use of their time? Seriously, didn't we already know that people are becoming too dependent on their smart phones? Did we really need a full scientific study on this? There is some guy toiling away in a lab, desperately trying to find a cure for a horrible disease, but he can't get funding to finish his experiments. Meanwhile, these people got grant money to tell us we're too attached to playing Angry Birds. (Which reminds me, who exactly authorized this research grant? They must have just been blown away by technical terms and not ever gotten to the heart of the matter, otherwise there is no way they let this get approved.) It makes me wonder if the kid in charge of picking an experiment was up all night, didn't think of a good topic and was watching TV and decided to pass Holmes' bit off as an experiment.

I kind of hope that last one is the case, because it leads me to wonder what scientific mystery these researching are going to solve next. Are they going to go all "Super-Size Me" on us and do lots of research to tell us fast food is bad for our health? Or are they going to use more comedy bits as the basis for their research? If they do, do you think they could finally figure out just what the hell the Roadrunner is? What about solving the ancient mystery of who, exactly, is on first? You think I'm kidding, but I'm only half-joking. It's not like these people are making much better use of their time.