Wasted Brain Power
Today with the use of mobile/cell phones you no longer need to memorize phone numbers which is a relief as it was a real problem not that long ago. Up until the mid 1990's if you wanted to contact anyone you needed to know their phone number. I think at one stage I must have had more than 30 phone numbers memorised which included family and friends along with the company you worked for and possibly some of your work colleagues. Kind of crazy when you think about this and now you no longer need to do this due to technology. I never really struggled having to do this and thinking about it can imagine if you were dating a few people at once how it could be a problem. The first phone I had was a brick and I cannot even recall if it allowed for storage of numbers or not.
This morning a number popped in my head for no reason and it was my army number which was your identification number and this was given to me in 1985. That is 39 years ago and I can recall the 10 digit number like it was yesterday and this is a number I will never forget. This is actually handy to have in the back of your head as if you ever need a password that is random using letters and numbers then this is it. If you can still recall it after 39 years then the chances are you will take this number to the grave.
Back in the day many people carried around a little phone book and I used to rather remember the numbers just in case I lost the book which would have then been a problem. Family used to tell me keeping all the phone numbers in my head was wasted brain space which may have been the case, but at least trained me in some ways to retain information out of necessity.
The bad part today is many people do not use their brains and have no idea how powerful they are and what is even capable. Life is too easy and everything is already done for you and people are generally lazy when it comes to thinking. Even the media feeds the masses with a set narrative that they consume and only a few question and think it may be fake.
The only items we need to know now are passwords for login purposes with the one exception many are just too long and depending on the number of sites it would be impossible to retain all that information. There is a big difference between a 10 digit phone number and a 24 plus password which contains numbers and letters using capitals and lower casings.
Passwords and logins rule our daily online activity these days which helps protect our data and information along with our crypto and bank accounts. I guess it is easy if you are bought up having to do this in the same way you needed to know phone numbers. I guess in the future there will be an easier way of protecting your information through encryption which I know is already available and will be launching this quarter via COTI.
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Your blog post brings back so many memories! It’s fascinating how technology has changed our daily habits, especially with something as simple as memorizing phone numbers. Your reflection on the shift from memorizing numbers to relying on technology highlights both the convenience and the potential downsides of our modern digital age. It’s a great reminder of how adaptable we are and how our brains can retain information for decades. Thanks for sharing this nostalgic and thought-provoking piece! 📱🧠✨
Funny how we used to remember so many numbers, but now we can barely handle passwords! Amazing that you still remember your army number after all these years—shows how strong our memory can be. 📱🧠
I do still memorize important numbers, like my wife's phone number :)
It is interesting, how long back, I DID know the numbers of the people I talked to on a regular basis. We did have a book and it did include those numbers, but it also included numbers of those folks who you might want or need to call sometime, but not often. Didn't think anything about all those stored numbers in the brain back then, that was just the way it was.