Sort Your Brain Out. Адриан Вебстер

      Internet search engines make a whole world of information instantly available to us, literally putting the information at our fingertips. So why would anyone want to bother committing anything to memory when it can be pulled up on a screen within seconds? Recent studies have shown that this might not be a great idea.

      When people know they can just search for the information again in the future, they retain what they've learned only for very short periods of time. It turns out that they're pretty good at knowing where to look to find this information again in the future. But until they do that, the information tends not to be available in their memory, posing a problem when it comes to getting wiser. No wonder conversations are forever being put on pause while people fiddle with their smartphones – to find those facts that they know, but can't quite remember.

      Access: In 1984, there were one thousand devices hooked up to the internet across the globe. Eight years later, in 1992, this number hit the one million mark. The one billion mark was crossed in 2008. These days it makes more sense to count how many people in the world don't have some kind of access to the internet (fewer than 2 billion in 2020).

      Quantity: By 2020 the digital world had been estimated to comprise 44 zettabytes (forty‐four thousand, billion, billion bytes). That's more bytes of data on the internet than there are stars in the universe.

Labour‐saving devices have unquestionably changed our lives beyond all recognition, but will the continuing tsunami of innovations leave us all with redundant brains, unable to do much without technological assistance? As yet, there are no conclusive answers to such questions. But you can rest assured that your brain will have been doing what brains do so brilliantly well – changing and adapting to meet the demands of the new digital environment it now spends the majority of the waking day immersed in. No matter how old your brain happens to be, it will already have been busy reconfiguring and shaping up to embrace whatever new challenges this ever‐expanding techno era happens to throw at it.

I want it now!

      Our brains might have changed over the years we've been alive, but human nature – as determined by our DNA – has not. The main reason why we, out of approximately 8.7 million other species currently sharing this planet, have been so successful is largely down to a deep‐rooted desire to feel a sense of progress. Thanks to lightning‐speed technology, we are now all advancing at an ever‐increasing rate with everybody expecting everything to be done in an instant – we want it now! And if we don't get what we want fast enough, human nature is such that we'll always be on the lookout for a shortcut. As soon as one becomes available, we'll take it!

      With shortcuts at the very heart of human nature we are all, unsurprisingly, more than happy to take the quickest option that modern technology can provide. And with the prospect of life improvement being at the forefront of our minds, at the earliest opportunity most of us will interface with whatever the latest technology happens to be, in the belief that it's going to make life easier or more interesting. This is an assumption that many people end up regretting.

      We may always be looking for the fastest, easiest route forward, using a whole array of “external brain” devices at our disposal, ranging from laptops to smartphones. We may have found numerous new ways of shifting a lot of the workload to them. But that doesn't necessarily mean that our brains are going to have less to do. Nor does it mean that they are going to become lazier and inevitably, having become semi‐dormant, find themselves out of a job.

On the contrary, a lot of the groundwork might be done for us, but by shifting it we simply free up cognitive resources for a new pile of (often unnecessary) extra work, along with a whole new set of pressures and obstacles created by it. All of which will need to be overcome and dealt with at an ever‐increasing rate.

      When calculators first came onto the scene there were serious concerns that they would make minds stagnant by taking away the need for mental arithmetic. More recently, when internet search engines first appeared, there was much talk about them making brains intellectually lazy. In both instances, very little evidence accumulated to back up these concerns. Instead it seems that both innovations mostly unlocked new possibilities and, brains being brains, they have moved onto bigger, more exciting challenges.

Despite how much new technology arrives on the scene, if we fully utilize it in a way that finds balance with the non‐technologically enhanced aspects of life, our brains should be moving in the opposite direction to idleness. Having once been stretched to the limit by performing a particular function, they should find themselves having to grapple with completely different tests in new areas.

      For example, where a brain was once challenged by the prospect of map reading, advancements in technology will mean that, despite no longer having to be quite so proficient in that skill, it will have to rise to the challenges of operating and following the instructions of satnav, but while still using your loaf. Those of us who have experienced setting off from A to go to B only to end up in C will know that this is no mean feat. Despite thousands of years' worth of inherited instinct and our gut feelings screaming at us that we are heading in completely the wrong direction, we still keep faith with the technology. It's important to be master, not slave, to our technologies; you still need to be the boss.

       “The greatest task before civilisation at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves instead of the masters of men.”

       Havelock Ellis

      Forever lost

      Your satnav doesn't have common sense – you do. Map reading and navigation are useful skills to have, particularly in the event of a technical hiccup. If you want to hold onto them, maintaining your self‐navigational skills is simple. Don't rely on satnav all the time, especially when you want to get to places you've been to many times before.

      Think of all those drivers of London's black cabs whose inflated hippocampi shrink back down after they retire. You need to keep on reusing those navigation pathways of your brain to keep them fresh. Before switching on the satnav, take a look at your route on a map to give yourself an idea of where you're going.

      The cognitive gymnastics required to convert a 2D map into a mental picture of the route you'll be taking in the 3D world gives parietal brain areas involved in “mental rotation” a great workout. And hopefully, the next time you find yourself driving the wrong way down a one‐way street, in the middle of a building site or along a road that doesn't exist, common sense will prevail.

The bottom line is that whether or not a brain does get made redundant is of course up to its owner. Neither technology nor the brain itself can be blamed if, through lack of appropriate stimulation, certain parts get left behind. Provided you give your basic cognitive abilities regular chances to be stretched, your brain is more than capable of keeping up.

External brain reliance

      As far as brain health is concerned, making use of technology is not in itself a problem. What is currently causing alarm in some circles is the increasing number of people who are becoming permanently hooked into and addictively dependent upon, certain types of technology.

      Even the less observant will have noticed the blind reliance that more and more people are placing in their devices. Taking a few moments to reflect upon the behaviours of people you see each day will surely convince you that an obsession with gadgetry is taking over people's lives. Walk down any busy street in any town and it won't be long before you see someone scurrying along the pavement, head down, squinting at some device or other – only to step out into the road without looking.

      With minds elsewhere, these digital lemmings seem completely oblivious at times as to just how close they are to eradicating themselves from the human gene pool. Perhaps