so youre relying on the Internet to remember things for you

People used to be able to retain really vast quantities of knowledge like reciting entire novels, word for word but technology has eliminated both the need and the drive to do so. When you know that Google or your smartphone can retain a piece of information for you, youre less likely to store it in memory, studies have shown. Scientific American last year likened the Internet to an external hard drive for our brains, as we outsource an increasing amount of information to the web. Thats not the worst thing in the world, Scientific American adds. Weve always outsourced some of that information to external hard drives of sorts, relying on friends rather than technology to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. But these day were "outsourcing" way more.