Memory. Most Americans don't have it anymore. Reading Moonwalking with Einstein a book about memory and how it has vanished. How many phone numbers do you remember? Your own. How many places do you drive to without GPS? Not many. How many times do you Google the name of an actor in a movie? How many times do you forget the birthdays of your kids? Well, you get the picture. We have now relegated memory to the ash heap of eight tracks and phonographs.
Sooo in Moonwalking with Einstein we have the memory athletes. Men and women who memorize books of information. Decks of cards. Reams of poetry. They do it and compete while we forget where we put our keys, our phone, our car. These guys are reciting back 17,000 digits. Hmmm. So we all have the Alzheimer fear. Or boy are we getting stupid. Memory was not always relegated to Google. It really started with Guttenberg and that crappy printing press.
And there is when the shift occurred. Or course it happened even further back when the Greeks started writing on scrolls. Memory was no longer pre eminent. And so lets fast forward to our digital world where we rely on computers for our memory. How then do we remember? Alright. Take three words you are not familiar with and now put them in three places in your house. Now. Visually those words in your house doing strange things. Like dripping blood. Covered in whip cream. Outlined in MMS. Now walk through your house to the three places you have those words. You now have them forever.
You cross referenced with the other side of your brain and it has become associated with an image. Much stronger than memory. Quick walk through your house again. Those three words will come to you again. Cool huh. I'm halfway through. I'll let you know how the rest of the book turns out.
If I can remember.
Rocket Man...Life after the Big City
Sooo in Moonwalking with Einstein we have the memory athletes. Men and women who memorize books of information. Decks of cards. Reams of poetry. They do it and compete while we forget where we put our keys, our phone, our car. These guys are reciting back 17,000 digits. Hmmm. So we all have the Alzheimer fear. Or boy are we getting stupid. Memory was not always relegated to Google. It really started with Guttenberg and that crappy printing press.
And there is when the shift occurred. Or course it happened even further back when the Greeks started writing on scrolls. Memory was no longer pre eminent. And so lets fast forward to our digital world where we rely on computers for our memory. How then do we remember? Alright. Take three words you are not familiar with and now put them in three places in your house. Now. Visually those words in your house doing strange things. Like dripping blood. Covered in whip cream. Outlined in MMS. Now walk through your house to the three places you have those words. You now have them forever.
You cross referenced with the other side of your brain and it has become associated with an image. Much stronger than memory. Quick walk through your house again. Those three words will come to you again. Cool huh. I'm halfway through. I'll let you know how the rest of the book turns out.
If I can remember.
Rocket Man...Life after the Big City
