If we seem to be forgetting more, it’s only because there’s much more to remember. Unsurprisingly, our brains have begun to use the Internet as our key external memory system, not retaining information that we know we can look up. It’s inevitable since our memories have never been incredibly elastic and more information than ever is available. Memory augmentation of some sort is also probably inevitable. From a New York Times story about memory research:

“The scientists, led by  Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia, wondered whether  people were more likely to remember information that could be easily retrieved from a computer, just as students are more likely to recall facts they believe will be on a test.

Dr. Sparrow and her collaborators, Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard and Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, staged four different memory experiments. In one, participants typed 40 bits of trivia — for example, ‘an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain’ — into a computer. Half of the subjects believed the information would be saved in the computer; the other half believed the items they typed would be erased.

The subjects were significantly more likely to remember information if they thought they would not be able to find it later. ‘Participants did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read,’ the authors write.”