I still remember every phone number from the day I learned to memorize phone numbers until I got my first cell phone. I remember my pager number. I remember my high school best friend’s parents’ number. I still know the number to the Mongolian BBQ joint that I ordered from when I was stationed in South Carolina. None of these are useful to me.
Also of no use is my icq number from the 90s that I remember.
However, the only useful numbers I remember are my main phone number, my parents land line (but that’s a holdover from before my first cell), and one friend who lives out of state. I don’t know anyone’s number who lives within 4 hours of me.
I guess I do also have my childhood landline still, but that’s been out of service for over 15 years. But it is one more phone number I have memorized.
Same thing that’s wrong with mine: the brain is really good at working collaboratively with other shit, and that means if the phone can remember the numbers your brain will happily give that task to the phone. I can remember so many number from before I had a cell, and almost none since then.
It’s also got to do with repetition. We used to dial the number each time, now we almost never type the digits in, just pull up a contact (or more likely, a text from them) and hit call
I still remember every phone number from the day I learned to memorize phone numbers until I got my first cell phone. I remember my pager number. I remember my high school best friend’s parents’ number. I still know the number to the Mongolian BBQ joint that I ordered from when I was stationed in South Carolina. None of these are useful to me.
Also of no use is my icq number from the 90s that I remember.
However, the only useful numbers I remember are my main phone number, my parents land line (but that’s a holdover from before my first cell), and one friend who lives out of state. I don’t know anyone’s number who lives within 4 hours of me.
I don’t know what’s wrong with my brain.
I guess I do also have my childhood landline still, but that’s been out of service for over 15 years. But it is one more phone number I have memorized.
Same thing that’s wrong with mine: the brain is really good at working collaboratively with other shit, and that means if the phone can remember the numbers your brain will happily give that task to the phone. I can remember so many number from before I had a cell, and almost none since then.
It’s also got to do with repetition. We used to dial the number each time, now we almost never type the digits in, just pull up a contact (or more likely, a text from them) and hit call