Here today, gone tomorrow...

Memory, that is.

David Brooks has a humorous column in the New York Times that suggests digital media is robbing us of our memory. He says that the 21st century will become known as the "Bad Memory Century," as we realize that our reliance on technology is coming at the expense of reliance on the original computer - our brains.

"As it becomes clear that a constant stream of blog posts and e-mails decimates the capacity for recall," Brooks writes, "people will be confronted with the modern Sophie's choice - your Blackberry or your mind."

It's a funny take on a phenomenon common to a lot of us. Take cell phones as a good example. Before you got your first cell phone, how many friends' phone numbers did you have committed to memory? A dozen? Even 20 or 30?

And how about now? (I can hardly even remember my own phone number, let alone anyone else's. I fear that little digital address book in my pocket has stolen a part of my gray matter!)

It's the Wikipediazation of knowledge. Why commit something to memory, when everything you'd ever want to know is a couple of mouse clicks away?

Does this scare anyone else as much as it does me?