This raises a prospect that has exhilarated many of the digerati. Perhaps the Internet can serve not merely as a supplement to memory but as a replacement for it. “I’ve almost given up making an effort to remember anything,” says Clive Thompson, a writer for Wired, “because I can instantly retrieve the information online.” David Brooks, in his New York Times column, writes, “I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive
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