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The Wiki Memory Crutch, a Recipe, and Answers from the Internet

November 16th, 2009

Twenty-four hour access to a hypothetically unlimited store of information is both a blessing and a curse. The always-on Internet and the emergence of resources like Wikipedia that conveniently store peripheral data on everything known to man have put the inner-workings of the world at our fingertips—but that doesn’t mean it’s made us any smarter. In fact, super Internet dweebs like myself might agree that we have sacrificed the skill of committing facts to memory in exchange for the ability to quickly and effectively Google our way to the answer for just about any question. We have, to some degree, relinquished our grasp on nebulous facts and replaced our memory with the collective knowledge of The Cloud™.

And though I like the idea of never needing to remember every nuanced rule for installing a light switch or hanging a ceiling fan, I’ve noticed lately that I’ve also begun to let simple intuition slide. I find myself trading a short spate of problem solving for a few quick keyboard clicks. The Internet—with all of its Answer services, its wikis, and its giant encyclopedic brain mere keystrokes away—has become a crutch for me and my memory, and the wisdom of crowds can’t always be trusted.

Take, for instance, this evening’s dilemma: How much does a typical bag of frozen spinach weigh? I didn’t have one on hand and wanted to use an equal amount of fresh spinach in its place.

I paused to ponder this question while in the process of putting together my new favorite dish. At that moment I might have pushed my brain to conjure up a few educated guesses, but I turned instead to my trusty keyboard and typed in a streamlined set of keywords that I felt would surely bring me quick results. A moment later I hastily clicked through to find this relatively unrelated but illuminating exchange posted on Answers.com:

I realized then how silly it was for me to fall into the knee-jerk trap of typing in search terms instead of taking the time to really think through the problem myself. I walked to my freezer, found a comparable bag of frozen corn that weighed a pound, and went with that. The lesson here is that you can’t always trust what the Internet tells you, and that most of the time a little trial and error coupled with some educated guessing will provide you with a workable solution. My thanks to the 14-year-old from Answers.com for helping me see the light.

By the way, the dish I was making is a Persian staple called Gormeh Sabzi that I highly recommend everyone immediately add to their kitchen repertoire—it’s so incredibly delicious and it makes a perfect meal for winter weather.

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