In modern culture, that rote memorization is what passes for "smart" now.
Not for long. Mobile Google has turned Trivial Pursuit into a typing competition.
I'd also question the use of the phrase modern culture here. In nonliterate cultures memorizing facts didn't just pass for smart, it was smart: An unmemorized fact was an unrecorded fact. In pre-Gutenberg literary culture paper, ink, and literacy itself were still sufficiently rare and expensive -- and entire books so much more expensive -- that it was still an important skill to be able to memorize lots of things.
(Those were the days when books were so costly that universities owned one copy of each book, and "education" consisted largely of copying out books that were read out to you by the lecturer. If you didn't copy down every word of Galen correctly as it was read out, you might be doomed to cite Galen wrong for the rest of your life, because it's not as if you were likely to be able to afford a copy written out by someone else.)
Now that paper is mass-produced by the ream, mass literacy exists, and even visual and auditory memory is heavily augmented by portable digicams and audio recording tech, we can afford to memorize less than ever before in history.
"Not for long. Mobile Google has turned Trivial Pursuit into a typing competition."
I hope you're right.
"I'd also question the use of the phrase modern culture here."
You make a good point.
It reminds me of the Aborgine's navigation technique referred to as "Songlines" or "Dreaming Tracks" -- they didn't have maps and instruments to navigate with, so instead they told stories. With those stories, they could convey not only a route, but also the locations of water holes and foraging grounds, and by using the story as a mnemonic, it was easy to learn and remember as well as to pass on to another.
Not for long. Mobile Google has turned Trivial Pursuit into a typing competition.
I'd also question the use of the phrase modern culture here. In nonliterate cultures memorizing facts didn't just pass for smart, it was smart: An unmemorized fact was an unrecorded fact. In pre-Gutenberg literary culture paper, ink, and literacy itself were still sufficiently rare and expensive -- and entire books so much more expensive -- that it was still an important skill to be able to memorize lots of things.
(Those were the days when books were so costly that universities owned one copy of each book, and "education" consisted largely of copying out books that were read out to you by the lecturer. If you didn't copy down every word of Galen correctly as it was read out, you might be doomed to cite Galen wrong for the rest of your life, because it's not as if you were likely to be able to afford a copy written out by someone else.)
Now that paper is mass-produced by the ream, mass literacy exists, and even visual and auditory memory is heavily augmented by portable digicams and audio recording tech, we can afford to memorize less than ever before in history.