I see computers as addressing a different part of the problem.
Lets take as a given that people need a way to recall pieces of information for use in the future.
1. Initially people would probably just wander around aimlessly and hope that their natural capabilities would be sufficient. Apparently this was not the case.
2. To reduce these short comings people developed memory techniques to better organise the information to be remembered. By chunking pieces of information in mnemonics and associating facts to these memory journeys they were better able to remember them.
3. Next people developed the technology of writing. This tool had a number of advantages over the previous techniques: less effort was required to store the information, it maintained its accuracy over a longer period of time, and the information didn't need to be recorded (memorised/written) by the person who would need to use it in the future. The method also had disadvantages: this new external form of memory required the person to take something extra along with them, as the number of pieces of information became larger it becomes harder and harder to sort through them to find the correct piece whereas the human brain doesn't seem to become as `distracted', and the individual pieces of information become less connected.
4. I see technology as helping to reduce these disadvantages. The internet means I can check email from any computer in the world and not just at the one computer it was composed at. Search engines assist in finding a particular piece of information within a greater body of information. I am not aware of a great example of information synthesis but I suppose that certain parts of text mining are making steps in this direction: eg, sentiment mining Twitter or trend detection.
Lets take as a given that people need a way to recall pieces of information for use in the future.
1. Initially people would probably just wander around aimlessly and hope that their natural capabilities would be sufficient. Apparently this was not the case.
2. To reduce these short comings people developed memory techniques to better organise the information to be remembered. By chunking pieces of information in mnemonics and associating facts to these memory journeys they were better able to remember them.
3. Next people developed the technology of writing. This tool had a number of advantages over the previous techniques: less effort was required to store the information, it maintained its accuracy over a longer period of time, and the information didn't need to be recorded (memorised/written) by the person who would need to use it in the future. The method also had disadvantages: this new external form of memory required the person to take something extra along with them, as the number of pieces of information became larger it becomes harder and harder to sort through them to find the correct piece whereas the human brain doesn't seem to become as `distracted', and the individual pieces of information become less connected.
4. I see technology as helping to reduce these disadvantages. The internet means I can check email from any computer in the world and not just at the one computer it was composed at. Search engines assist in finding a particular piece of information within a greater body of information. I am not aware of a great example of information synthesis but I suppose that certain parts of text mining are making steps in this direction: eg, sentiment mining Twitter or trend detection.