Deducing Dunces

I was talking to an Information Scientist the other day (I do actually know a few) and he reacted to my standard rant with a curious observation. After patiently listening to my unfounded theory that deep reading will be lost on future generations, and that their memorization skills will suffer accordingly, my colleague said, “I wonder what sort of creativity will be possible once that brain space becomes available.” After pondering this statement for a while, I realized where I had heard it before: Sherlock Holmes. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson is shocked that Holmes has no knowledge of the Copernican model of the solar system. Holmes dismisses his own ignorance by using an analogy to compare the human brain to a small storage attic:

It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

If Holmes and my Information Scientist friend are correct, we must ask then what exactly is “useful” information? Do we free up the millennial’s mind by forsaking deep reading only to fill the vacuum with cute cat videos and 140 character weather updates? Are the Information Scientists actually rewiring the human brain to focus on the trivial? Here at True Archives we answer a resounding “YES!”