The End of Remembering

"Forgotten phone numbers and birthdays represent minor erosions of our everyday memory, but they are part of a much larger story of how we've supplanted our own natural memory with a vast super-structure of technological crunches -- from the alphabet to the BlackBerry. These technologies of storing information outside our minds have helped make our modern world possible, but they've also changed how we think and how we use our brains. "

This is a quote from Moonwalking with Einstein, which I'm currently reading. I picked this book up at my new fave local bookstore, Parnassus Books (co-founded by Ann Patchett, swoon) because 1. Heather Dixon is awesome and gave me a gift certificate for my birthday and 2. I've been thinking about memory lately, and that's what this book is about.

In the book, author Joshua Foer learns that there's such a thing as memory contests, and he ends up training for one because apparently having a good memory is more of a developed skill than an innate gift. His trainers and mentors parlay their methods, which include assigning personas to numbers and very specific images to designated places in the "memory palace."

Technology, however, has taken the place of memory in a lot of instances. I can't tell you how many times I have to check my calendar each day to remember what meetings I have, only to show up in the wrong conference room because I spaced on the thing I JUST READ.

The thing is, I used to have a great memory. And I remember assigning personalities to numbers when I was learning my multiplication tables. Seven was the teenage girl who went on date, six was a little brother in a baseball cap, and I don't remember the rest, but every digit 1-9 had a persona, and visualizing them and their actions helped me memorize. In high school Latin, I made up crazy mnemomics to help me learn the vocabulary words in my deck of flashcards. I'll never, ever forget that the word lapis means stone, because I would picture the "p" in the word flipping over to become a "d," which made me think of the four "lads" from Liverpool, who back in the day went by The Quarrymen. And what do you find in a quarry? Stones, duh.

Memory is a funny thing, and I'm excited to keep reading this book (yes, I'm already blogging about it a third of the way in) and tap into whatever's left of mine. I might start by memorizing all the phone numbers of my friends, because that's useful.