There is no shortage of articles for people who are worried about losing memory as they age. For me, the fear of dementia has me practicing brain games, doing crossword puzzles, writing with my non-dominant hand and even considering learning the ukulele. The theory is, “use it or lose it.” But think about it. People born before 1960 – many of whom battle memory loss as they reach retirement age – used their brains for storing more data than later generations do. They memorized phone numbers. If they worked in supermarkets, they remembered hundreds of produce codes in their actual brains.
To get from place A to place B, they made mental note of the path and relied on their memory of various points of interest along the way.
So if their generation is worried about losing the ability to do that which they once could, what about today’s kids, who rarely, if ever, use those parts of their brains? I have a growing fear that technology is making us stupid.
Evolution suggests that, as animals adapt over time, subtle changes take place across generations to eliminate things we do not use or need in our environments. Last fall, scientists even discovered a “new” organ (the mesentery). They don’t know what it does. But it’s there.
And then there are body parts that we no longer need. Take wisdom teeth, for example. People really don’t need them anymore and some don’t even grow them anymore. The human jaw no longer accommodates in size for wisdom teeth because we’re no longer gnawing on rocks. Likewise, the appendix, which helped our herbivorous ancestors digest tree bark, is both the cause of problems and an unexpected source of immunity. Instead of helping us digest tree bark, the appendix apparently is now only useful in providing immunity for the gut.
So if we can do without certain organs, are we setting ourselves up for dumbing down our brains? Will the brain become a “vestigial” or even “optional” organ like the appendix? On a daily basis (or hourly or by-the-minute) we use technology to skip the “need” for deductive reasoning, logic, mathematics and even sense of direction.
We even rely more on technology than on our brains for things like memory or “driving” a car.
What will the human species look completely different in 50 years? 100 years? 200 years? Will our brains be formed differently? Will they evolve to complete functions that we can’t yet imagine the need for? Maybe it will work organ-in-organ with the elusive “mesentery” in helping us become even better humans.
Maybe we’ll grow more thumbs for texting. Or maybe we’ll just become robots.
