The human mind is never inferior to technology. | Photo credit: Getty Images
A few months ago, I got a call from my mom at dawn, so I was lazing around in bed answering the phone. She asked for the contact information of my math teacher at school. I didn't hesitate and quickly recited the number. She told me to sleep soundly and I hung up.
When I came home two weeks later, during a normal conversation with my parents, my mother asked me how I remembered the phone number. I was a little confused, since it was a regular habit for me and my father to remember contact numbers. After the conversation, I went to bed. I closed my eyes and a bunch of nostalgic events came to mind.
During my childhood, during holidays, my father used to place a one rupee coin under my pillow. Both my parents worked and left for work early, and I would get up from bed only after the sun had risen to the sky. When I woke up, I would go to the nearest phone booth, put in the coin and call my father's number to let him know that I was up. My parents' mobile numbers and my grandparents' landline numbers were always in my memory. As I grew up, I got hold of many friends' numbers and wrote them down in my diary. Every time I would open my diary and type in the number, but the number was already saved in my contacts, and as a result, more and more numbers became fixed in my memory.
Whenever I visited my grandparents, I was amazed at the perfect calculations they performed. My grandmother never used pen and paper to calculate the household expenses or the amount owed to the milkman. My grandfather is a pensioner, but whenever the price allowance is revised, he makes accurate calculations of his pension despite his age. My grandparents call me to check the calculations. I verify the calculations on my mobile calculator. To my surprise, they have never made a mistake.
Recently, I wrote an inland letter to my aunt. I had to write the address on the envelope, so I asked my father for help. Without a second thought, my father quickly gave me the address along with the zip code. I was puzzled and asked him how he managed to remember all that. My father smiled and asked me how I could have forgotten the address, when I had written to my aunt so many times.
As I grew up, I noticed that people's memory skills were declining rapidly. Among my friends, many people, except for a handful, can't even remember their own phone numbers. This is all thanks to the rapid spread of smartphones. Smartphones have countless benefits, but they are not without their drawbacks. Declining memory skills is one of them. We have become dependent on our mobile phones even for simple calculations. When the current generation buys an item, it is obvious that they cannot quickly calculate the remaining amount owed by the store clerk. It is not surprising that in the near future, people will forget their ATM pin numbers, passwords, UPI pin numbers, etc. This is already happening and is likely to increase in the future. If this continues, the cognitive abilities of the next generation will be in a serious situation.
It is time to take a break from technology and revive it to its past glory. The human mind is in no way inferior to technology. It is like a muscle, the more you use it, the bigger it gets. Neuroplasticity is widespread. Give your smartphone a rest and start using your brain when you can. It's like oiling a machine. Thinking about all these things in bed left my mind tired and sleepy.
