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if it’s true that we’re damaging or losing our working memories each time we interface with the Internet [...] what isn’t so clear is how we could reclaim them

A cool project, unless it's been done or approximated already, would be a screensaver that parses through emails, music files, photos, videos, ebooks etc on your PC and plays a portion of them very briefly to rekindle the memories in your brain. Sort of like a dream played in fast-forward. In the case of ebooks and emails, you could convert small chunks of text to synthesized speech and flash the text on the screen in large font, intermingling between photos and snippets of video or music.

Of course you'd want to have a level of control over what content is shown, lest your erotic fan-fiction and sub-sub-genre of niche pornography is advertised to everyone around you. Although that could be a feature.

You may want to consider Mary Flanagan's "[phage]"[0], which did something like this. I had downloaded the Shockwave program once in the early '00s, but I can't find a link for it now.

[0] http://maryflanagan.com/work/phage/

consider Mary Flanagan's "[phage]"

Good find! Thanks.

Makes me wonder if there is any major information repository that is truly "darknet" in the sense that it's never even been written down, passed orally for generations with extreme precautions against mechanical recording.
Why is using the Internet synonymous with not being able to remember. I find that I search for things I don't know and then retain the memory.