How Many Phone Numbers Do You Know By Heart?

It used to be most of them...

I've been reading an interesting book by Manfred Spitzer, called Digitale Demenz and it has made me sit back and ponder.

Digitale Demenz: Wie wir uns und unsere Kinder um den Verstand bringen

Numbers and remembering them used to be one of my strong suits but now that has changed into the weaker hand. Funnily enough, I am much better at remembering land line phone numbers and perhaps that is because land line numbers are dialed and not stored in a mobile phone.

Bob is a magician when it comes to remembering numbers, phone numbers and he can rattle off a long string of numbers that will get us through to his brother in Denmark as fast as we can dial it. Yet, with the advent of Smartphones and the old fashioned cell / mobile phones, the need to use our own memory has been lessened.

Most of us have a long list of names in the online address book of our phones, yet if it were stolen or lost, we too would be lost to the world...incommunicado!

How often do we see that message on social media to do with a stolen phone and a request for phone numbers? Too dreadful what we've morphed into in such a short space of time. We, who used to be good at learning the times-table off by heart, have been reduced to needing help to remember phone numbers of our loved ones.

As soon as we could learn anything, we were drilled in the ability to say our address and phone number, just in case we'd get lost. Is that still happening or is it more a case of putting important phone numbers on speed dial? But more importantly, should young children really have a Smartphone?

Technology has taken over so many of our thought processes, that, if it is true what they say about our brains,

" Use it or lose it "

we are in real trouble...

P/S: (13-5)+(67x3) =?...can you still do it the old fashioned way?

Biggi