In 2018, Science magazine asked som

In 2018, Science magazine asked some youngscientists what schools should teach students. Most said students should spendless time memorizing facts and have more space for creative activities. As theInternet grows more powerful, students can access(获得) knowledge easily. Why should they be required tocarry so much of it around in their heads?Civilizations(文明) develop through forgetting life skills that wereonce necessary. In the Agricultural(农业的) Age,a farmer could afford to forget hunting skills. When societies industrialized,the knowledge of farming could be safe to forget. Nowadays, smart machines giveus access to most human knowledge. It seems that we no longer need to remembermost things. Does it matter?Researchers have recognized severalproblems that may happen. For one, human beings have biases(偏见), and smart machines are likely to increase our biases.Many people believe smart machines are necessarily correct and objective, butmachines are trained through a repeated testing and scoring process. In theprocess, human beings still decide on the correct answers.Another problem relates to the ease of accessinginformation. When there were no computers, efforts were required to getknowledge from other people, or go to the library. We know what knowledge liesin other brains or books, and what lies in our heads. But today, the Internetgives us the information we need quickly. This can lead to the mistakenbelief—the knowledge we found was part of what we knew all along.In a new civilization rich in machineintelligence, we have easy access to smart memory networks where information isstored. But dependency on a network suggests possibilities of being harmedeasily. The collapse of any of the networks ofrelations our well-being(健康) depends upon, such as foodand energy, would produce terrible results. Without food we get hungry; withoutenergy we feel cold. And it is through widespread loss of memory thatcivilizations are at risk of falling into a dark age.We forget old ways to free up time andspace for new skills. As long as the older forms of knowledge are storedsomewhere in our networks, and can be found when we need them, perhaps they’renot really forgotten. Still, as time goes on, we gradually but unquestionablybecome strangers to future people.