The classic way of learning has evolved with history. Before having books, everything was memorized with a few exceptions. The Google era is just another step in this evolution. Why would we waste time memorizing stuff if we can just look it up? Might be argued that Googling takes time. Of course it does, but there will come the next era where our thought could prompt a query and get an answer without physically doing it. That will be the next step in human learning.
Sounds like sci-fi? So did the idea of having all the information available on the tip of your hands 30 years ago.
> Why would we waste time memorizing stuff if we can just look it up
Because from memorized knowledge comes inspiration. If you are thinking about something, and actually know many things you can put all those things together subconsciously and have a flash of insight.
Without all that memorized knowledge you have to laboriously look everything up and you may never make the connections.
If there's one thing I remember well it's relationships and behaviours(probably the same for most engineers). This is distinct from what I would call knowledge (i.e. when something happened). For me inspiration always seems to come from comparing relationships and behaviours, memorizing information rotely doesn't contribute to this at all.
The problem I've found is I've become so used to no "waste time memorizing stuff" I've forgotten how to memorize things.
Which is a problem when I need to learn things that can't just be looked up online when you need them, like a new language. When I try to learn new vocabulary or something my brain just refuses to leave its default lazy "aww, just look it up on Google" mode. It's annoying.
I agree with you, it is quite annoying. I found an interesting quote from a PG's essay "Great Hackers" [1]:
"Several friends mentioned hackers' ability to concentrate-- their ability, as one put it, to "tune out everything outside their own heads.'' I've certainly noticed this. And I've heard several hackers say that after drinking even half a beer they can't program at all. So maybe hacking does require some special ability to focus. Perhaps great hackers can load a large amount of context into their head, so that when they look at a line of code, they see not just that line but the whole program around it. John McPhee wrote that Bill Bradley's success as a basketball player was due partly to his extraordinary peripheral vision. "Perfect'' eyesight means about 47 degrees of vertical peripheral vision. Bill Bradley had 70; he could see the basket when he was looking at the floor. Maybe great hackers have some similar inborn ability. (I cheat by using a very dense language, which shrinks the court.)"
Sounds like sci-fi? So did the idea of having all the information available on the tip of your hands 30 years ago.