This is Dory.
Everybody knows Dory.
She's everybody's favorite, cute, blue fish from "Finding Nemo."
Everybody likes Dory.
I think the reason everybody likes Dory is because she's relatable.
We're all a lot like Dory in two pretty big ways:
Just like Dory, we all have adorably short attention spans.
It's true.
In 2000, the average human attention span was 12 seconds.
in 2015, it had dropped to 8.25 seconds, eight and a quarter seconds.
For a little bit of context,
the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.
Just like Dory, we're not very good at concentrating.
And just like Dory, we all suffer from a touch of memory loss.
Hate to break it to you; just like Dory--
Dory's probably one of her biggest traits is her short-term memory loss.
Yours isn't quite as bad, but it's definitely there.
The thing is we weren't always this much like Dory.
We used to be a lot more like Marlin, Nemo's dad.
We could actually concentrate and remember things.
But in the last 20, 30 years, or so we started to become a lot more Doryaque.
There's a reason for that,
and it has to do with the explosion of digital technology
and this concept called neuro-plasticity.
Sound's complicated, but it's not.
It's just the idea your brain is adaptable,
it can change and reorganize itself.
Because your brain is made up of around 21 billion brain cells or neurons,
and they make all sorts of connections between each other.
That's how you think.
Every time you experience something,
those connections change a little bit
and that's what's learned.
Let's say I'm walking down the street and I run into somebody walking their dog.
It's a cute, cuddly, little thing, and I stop to pat it.
Then my brain reinforces the connection,
"Oh! Dogs are cute, and they're nice. I don't have to be scared of dogs."
But if I'm walking down the street, I walk pass somebody's house,
and there's this rottweiler out in the front yard, barking, growling,
it's lunging at me, and I'm freaked out.
Then my brain makes the connection, "You know what? Dogs are scary.
I need to be a little careful around dogs from now on."
That's the idea of neuro-plasticity.
It's that your brain can change depending on the experiences you have.
But what that means is every time you interact with a piece of technology,
whether it's your phone, computer, whatever,
your brain changes a little bit.
What digital technology does is it promotes multi-tasking.
It encourages you to multi-task, to refocus your attention between things,
like you're sitting down at your desk writing something,
and then you check your phone, then you go back to writing,
then you reply to an email, and then you go back to writing.
You're getting a lot more practice shifting you attention
than you would have 20 or 30 years ago
before digital technology became such big thing.
Your brain is like a muscle, it changes,
and the more you use it, the better it gets, the stronger it gets,
and the less you use it, the weaker it gets.
So all this practice of reshifting your attention
means that you have gotten really good at multi-tasking,
but at the expense of your ability to concentrate.
The same thing happens to your memory, too
- has happened, is happening -
if you don't use it, you lose it.
Humans have this process called transactive memory
And again, it sounds fancy. It's pretty simple.
It's just the idea that if I don't know something
I can ask somebody who does know that thing,
and they'll be able to tell me.
I don't know very much about the TV show "Doctor Who,"
but my friend Ben does.
So if I need to know this Doctor Who factoid or tidbit,
I can ask Ben and the odds are he'll be able to tell me about it.
And visa versa: if Ben needs to know something that I know,
he can ask me and I can tell him.
That's the idea behind transactive memory:
that if everybody in a social group, no matter how big that social group is,
whether it's me and Ben,
or me and my family, or me and all of my friends,
if everybody in that group is responsible for remembering
only a part of the information,
then everybody in the group has access to all of the information,
which is a lot more than any of them could remember by themselves.
That's for all you visual learners in case you wanted to read it.
Traditionally, humans used each other as transactive memory partners
who would rely on each other to remember things.
But since digital memory has become so readily available,
we started to rely on computers on the Internet
as transactive memory partners, which is kind of cool.
But the thing is computers are better at remembering than humans:
(a) they don't forget things,
(& b) they know almost everything thanks to the Internet.
That means every time you use a computer as a transactive memory partner,
it's like you're interacting with this super person,
somebody who's so, so, so, so, so good at remembering
you can't even comprehend it.
That's a different experience
than the one you would've had 20, 30 years ago
when you were mostly having transactive memory processes with other people.
It's a different experience
which means your brain reacts to it differently
and has changed because of that.
Here's how it's changed - and a study was actually done on this -
and what they found
is that if you use a computer as a transactive memory partner,
you are actually a little bit worst at remembering that information
which makes sense; that's what transactive memory partners do.
Let's say I'm given a list of facts to read,
and I'm asked to remember as many of them as possible.
If I copy that list of facts into a computer first,
I will remember less of them
because by copying them into the computer,
I'm establishing the computer as a transactive memory partner.
So I subconsciously go,
"Oh, hey! it's remembering it for me; I don't need to,"
and then I forget some of them.
The thing is that will happen,
whether or not I'm trying to remember the facts.
The subconscious drive for me to rely on that computer
to remember part of the information for me
is so strong that it's overpowering my conscious effort to remember.
Every time a computer is involved in a transactive memory process with you,
it induces a lit bit of memory loss on that subject.
That sounds kind of scary.
It's like, "Ah! I don't want to be like Dory anymore.
I thought this will be a cute presentation."
Don't worry; all I can say is this:
as long as we as humans keep using technology,
our brains will keep changing, keep adapting to it.
That's not good or bad, it just is.
It's a fact of our lives at this moment.
But I don't think it's a fact you should ignore
Because if you ignore it, but you continue to use tech,
you won't have any say in how it may or may not change you.
You'll just be going along for the ride whether you like it or not.
The whole reason I've been telling you this,
sharing this information with you,
telling you how and why technology can influence you
is so that you can accept it and do something about it.
Because once you accept that knowledge,
you can start to ask yourself questions,
say things to yourself, like "You know what self?
I'll re-train myself to concentrate"
-- because you can do that.
If not practicing your concentration has made you worst at it,
then if you practice it, you'll get better.
Or maybe you'll say to yourself,
"You know what self? I'll embrace that short attention span
and become this multi-tasking machine."
That's a perfectly valid option.
But most importantly, you've chosen which path you wanted to pursue.
Let's be honest here:
we're all like Dory and technology has made us so.
You are all like Dory.
And what that means
is you probably haven't been able to pay attention to most of my talk.
Just do this one thing for me:
accept the knowledge I've given you.
Don't panic when you think about it, just accept it, but then use it.
Decide on your course of action.
Take a deep breath and follow it.
Even if the going gets tough, or weird, or scary,
don't panic and just keep swimming.
Thank you.
(Applause)