[om3n]

Your brain my not remember the phone numbers, but it contains the location of (or the pointers to) the object that contains the phone numbers.

Sort of reminds me of the "extended mind thesis"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind_thesis

[taneq]

Yeah, I've noticed that I remember a lot more information these days as... external references? Breadcrumbs? Like, I have no idea what that person's called but I know I got an email from them last Thursday so I can look it up if I need to. Or I don't know the exact phrasing of a quote but I know the exact search term I'd use to find it on the web.

[dasyatidprime]

Now, what happens when, say, memories of conversations turn into pointers to chat logs that are stored on the central server, where they can be modified, deleted, or your access taken away by the service or nowadays often by the other party?

[knd775]

I automatically backup all of my tweets to a google sheet that I then download periodically. I don't necessarily do it for the reason that you gave, but that's definitely a reason to to something like this.

[therein]

We will be left with worthless dangling pointers to our memories.

[oarabbus_]

Extended mind... interesting, but also seems untestable/in the realm of pseudo-science.