Don’t just Google it! First, let’s talk!

Asking questions in conversation has become problematic. For example, try saying this out loud: “I wonder when Martin Luther King was born?” If you ask that online, a likely response is: “Just Google it!” Maybe with a snarky link: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=when was martin luther king born?

Asking in conversation is frowned upon too. Why ask us when you could ask Siri or Alexa to ask Google?

There’s a kind of shaming going on here. We are augmented with superpowers, people imply, you’re an idiot to not use them.

Equally problematic is the way this attitude shuts down conversation. Sure, I can look up MLK’s birthday. Or you can. But what if our phones are dead? Now we need to rely on our own stored knowledge and, more importantly, on our collective pool of stored knowledge.

I think MLK was shot in 1968. I’d have been twelve. Does that sound right? Yeah, we were in the new house, it was sixth grade. And I know he died young, maybe 42? So I’ll guess 1968 – 42 = 1926.

Were you around then? If so, how do you remember MLK’s assassination? If not, what do you know about the event and its context?

As you can see in the snarky screencast, I’m wrong, MLK died even younger than I thought. You might know that. If we put our heads together, we might get the right answer.

Asking about something that can easily be looked up shouldn’t stop a conversation, it should start one. Of course we can look up the answer. But let’s dwell for a minute on what we know, or think we know. Let’s exercise our own powers of recall and synthesis.

Like all forms of exercise, this one can be hard to motivate, even though it’s almost always rewarding. Given a choice between an escalator and the stairs, I have to push myself to prefer the stairs. In low-stakes wayfinding I have to push myself to test my own sense of direction. When tuning my guitar I have to push myself to hear the tones before I check them. I am grateful to be augmented by escalators, GPS wayfinders, and tuners. But I want to use these powers in ways that complement my own. Finding the right balance is a struggle.

Why bother? Consider MLK. In The unaugmented mind I quoted from MLK confidante Clarence Jones’ Behind the Dream:

What amazed me was that there was absolutely no reference material for Martin to draw upon. There he was [in the Birmingham jail] pulling quote after quote from thin air. The Bible, yes, as might be expected from a Baptist minister, but also British prime minister William Gladstone, Mahatma Gandhi, William Shakespeare, and St. Augustine.

And:

The “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” showed his recall for the written material of others; his gruelling schedule of speeches illuminated his ability to do the same for his own words. Martin could remember exact phrases from several of his unrelated speeches and discover a new way of linking them together as if they were all parts of a singular ever-evolving speech. And he could do it on the fly.

Jones suggests that MLK’s power flowed in part from his ability to reconfigure a well-stocked working memory. We owe it to ourselves, and to one another, to nurture that power. Of course we can look stuff up. But let’s not always go there first. Let’s take a minute to exercise our working memories and have a conversation about them, then consult the oracle. I’ll bet that in many cases that conversation will turn out to be the most valuable part of the experience.