The word amnesia is derived from the Greek words “a”, meaning “without” and “mnémē”, meaning memory.
Amnesia is a mix out of these two definitions and describes the loss of ones own memories, sometimes leading up to a state in which people can´t save new things in their brain.
To survive you don´t have to remember everything on your own, but at least you should know who knows what you want to know. In former times, those people were mostly family or friends, perhaps also a suitable encyclopedia.
Today, its Google!
When the terms “amnesia” and “Google” come together, they lead to the “Google effect”, also called “digital amnesia”.
The good thing is that Google doesn´t forget anything. The bad thing is that your brain thinks it can forget everything because Google won´t.
It´s proven that you are more likely to remember the place where the information is stored rather than the information itself. In this case, Google is the storage for every piece of information you need.
Thanks to Google, your brain doesn´t have to remember all of those different locations where the information used to be stored. This provides you the security of being able to freely forget the information, since you know where to access the information at any given point.
Additional, the immediate use of Google as a reaction of a question that comes up in your mind supports the amnesia. This is because the processing of the information and the unconscious assimilation with other pieces of information falls away.
However, there are points of hope as this kind of amnesia doesn´t influence the part of the brain in which action sequences are stored. This means that you won’t forget the basic actions of the everyday life, such as how to get dressed. Also, Google will still be there tomorrow to serve as your amnesia-compensation.
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