The ability to quickly google a piece of information != knowing, understanding, or being able to use it in any meaningful sense.
The notion that memorization is useless or somehow not integral to the learning process is wrong. When you intuitively know an idea, you can build upon it and combine it with other ideas in a subconscious and long-term way. This isn't possible if you externalize your memory to a computer.
I bet you know this, quite old, quotation on memory:
"They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks."
> The notion that memorization is useless or somehow not integral to the learning process is wrong. When you intuitively know an idea, you can build upon it and combine it with other ideas in a subconscious and long-term way.
There is a profound difference between memorizing sequences of characters (passwords, ids, phone numbers, surnames, dates, particular APIs) and memorizing concepts (which may, but not need to, use these characters as a component).
Sure, that quote is from Socrates about books. I don’t think he’s actually wrong: the average person today probably is less mentally capable than ~2,500 years ago. Books are more useful as a storage device, to be sure, but externalization does have downsides when it comes to mental cognition itself.
Don’t disagree with on the sequences of characters point, though. Unfortunately most people don’t make that distinction and lump everything into the ‘not worth memorizing’ camp.
The notion that memorization is useless or somehow not integral to the learning process is wrong. When you intuitively know an idea, you can build upon it and combine it with other ideas in a subconscious and long-term way. This isn't possible if you externalize your memory to a computer.