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slate.com | Article Link | by Annie Murphy Paul

A young doctor-in-training examines a new patient. Should she draw information for the diagnosis from her “E-memory”—electronic memory, the kind that’s available on a computer? Or should she dip into her “O-memory”—organic memory, the old-fashioned sort that resides in the brain?

Research shows that apprentice doctors are increasingly relying on E-memory, often in the form of a digital resource called UpToDate. This is an electronic reference tool, accessible on physicians’ laptops or mobile phones; tap in the patient’s symptoms, and up comes a potential diagnosis and a recommended course of treatment. A recent study found that 89 percent of medical residents regard UpToDate as their first choice for answering clinical questions.

Like many of us, doctors are shifting their stores of knowledge from O-memory to E-memory. That’s not to say that they, or we, are doing so consciously. Electronic memory tools are now so convenient and omnipresent that we often aren’t even aware that we’re using them as extensions of our organic memory. But some thinkers—including Robert W. Clowes, a philosopher from the New University of Lisbon in Portugal who proposed the E and O terminology—argue that it’s important to recognize the two types of memory, and the differences between them.

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