MEGAN MCARDLE: Blame the Machines.

In late July 2013, 16-year-old Pablo Garcia, who was in the hospital for a routine colonoscopy to check on his congenital gastrointestinal condition, began complaining of numbness and tingling all over his body. Soon he was having seizures. What caused this strange condition? His medication, it turned out: He’d been given 39 times too much antibiotic. How this occurred is the subject of a fascinating piece on Medium, which I urge you all to read. But if I had to condense its five parts’ worth of fascinating insights into one sentence, here’s how it would read: “Machines make us stupid.”

For example, I spent three months traveling last fall, with only a few weekends in the District of Columbia. By the time I returned, I had forgotten the number of our landline. To be sure, we don’t use it very often. Still. We’ve had that number for five years. I forgot it in less than one football season.

But of course, I no longer need to remember phone numbers. I have a cell phone for that. For any other knowledge I need handy, I have a computer. For anything I need to learn, there’s Google. In some sense, this means that I have a better memory and wider knowledge than I used to. But if I’m cut off from these tools, I am suddenly a moron.

I make a point of not using a calculator, and of remembering phone numbers, as much as I can for that very reason. Use it or lose it.