It all started when I was five. My family got their first computer and with it a dial-up connection to the beloved American Online. I enjoyed the new computer. My family rejoiced our new connection to the global community. Unbeknownst to me, however, I was exposed to virus, one that would slowly erode my memory: a virus called the internet.

I can’t remember Abraham Lincoln’s birthday although I’ve seen it a hundred times. I can not seem to recall Mahatma Gandhi’s hometown although I just read it on Wikipedia four times for a term paper. There’s no recollection of how to make an object class in Java even though Google just told me how. Why is this? This is because every time I am exposed to new subject matter on the Internet a voice in the back of head booms:

“Mike, there’s no point in remembering this. It will be here later. You can find it in 10 seconds.”

Even if I fight, resist and struggle against it my memory soon falters. Years of exposure to content on the web has left a vivid scar on my brain. My memory has become lazy. I visit the NY Times to read an article. I think about it. I contemplate on it. Yet, the second I navigate away from the page 60% of my memory is lost.

The struggle does not end there: this virus is a smart one. It makes us lust for its all encompassing “external” memory. It makes our lives so convenient: Facebook, so we never have to remember a birthday; large email boxes, so we can bring up our forgotten to-do lists; Google, so knowledge is always just a search away; and Wikipedia, so we never have to remember how many ships Columbus sailed. All this only an icon click away online. Our memory is pitted against this monster of an infection on a daily basis. With Internet use starting to compete with TV, how can we resist? It is the new medium of communication… and the new medium of mental disease.

Share your stories of how the Internet has sapped your memory. What have you forgotten or, more importantly, do you remember what you’ve forgotten?