LearningMore

In researching a post about brain stress levels and how we manage information for Howdy Product, I found an interesting article on how many memories we forget. If the author is true, and our “fragments of experience that do get encoded into long-term memory are then subject to ‘creative editing'”, then what is our response? I’ve been thinking about my own relationship to my personal record- what do I want to capture? How do I want to revisit it?

Essentially, how important are my memories to my overall existence?

More on writing your personal record:

Maria Popova – Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age (video below). Kottke – developing a personal scheme to categorize your life.

An interesting take on Lisa Genova’s Book “Remember..”:

“To remember an event is to reimagine it; in the reimagining, we inadvertently introduce new information, often colored by our current emotional state. A dream, a suggestion, and even the mere passage of time can warp a memory. It is sobering to realize that three out of four prisoners who are later exonerated through DNA evidence were initially convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony. “You can be 100 percent confident in your vivid memory,” Genova writes, “and still be 100 percent wrong.” — David Kortava (Source: A Neuroscientist’s Poignant Study of How We Forget Most Things in Life | The New Yorker)

Find Buy Lisa Genova’s book “Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting”:
In a library: Print, Audiobook, Digital
From Amazon: Print, Digital
(A note: I may receive a commission from these links, at no cost to you.)

 

Maria Popova, Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age

I’m a big fan of Maria Popova- especially her thoughts on finding your own meaning and creating your own personal record (YouTube video):

“All the convenience of being able to access a thousand titles on an e-reader could never justify its efficient obliteration of a young person’s shelf of cherished books. Seven “Harry Potter” volumes stacked next to the bed are a monument to a kid’s determination and devotion; seven “Harry Potter” titles on a Kindle might as well be under an invisibility cloak.” Source.

Ron Charles wrote the quote above in a Washington Post article, illustrating an impending problem related to a digital world: physical representation.

(A quick aside- my first name is Charles, and the author I am referring to is Ron Charles, a Washington Post book critic. To avoid confusion, I’ll refer to Ron Charles as “the author”.)

When children read ebooks, the author contends there is no physical shelf of completed books that can be proudly pointed to.

My daughter recently ran up to me, holding out a newly-loaned chapter book:

“Dad! Look how thick it is! How many pages do you think it has?!”

She reminded me of a tiny track and field pole vaulter, amazed at the height of a bar she recently launched over.

She was proud of reading “big books”, the “chapter books” with limited pictures. Would she feel the same pride by pointing to the little dots representing pages on a Kindle screen?

I agree- when we begin reading eBooks, we are not left with the 14 inch span of books on a shelf as a testament to the work. Physical objects are great reminders to link us back to memories.

(I’ve read that the sense of smell has the strongest link to our memories. However, I can’t imagine living in a house constantly assaulted by scents of Apple Pie, loamy dirt or sweaty gym shorts. Can you? I prefer to stay with pictures and physical mementos for now.)

Ebooks and digital learning are definitely here to stay.

Memories of experiences are still important— even if that experience happened because of a digital screen.

And, reminding ourselves of (digital) memories helps us to reinforce our goals, encourage us and even warn us.

So, where does that leave us?

I think we need physical representations of the important parts of our digital lives. We already have digital representations of our physical lives in our cyber experience- Facebook reminds us of last Halloween’s photos. So also, we need our digital world showing in our physical experience.

Some of you are probably imagining holograms right now. Others may be imagining a room’s walls converted to massive screens.

Let’s take a step back. I have a simple example:

I saw a poster titled “Top 100 Must-Read Books”. Empty rectangles represent each book title. Once a book title is finished, the reader gets to place a sticker in that book’s space. I agree, this sounds like an elementary school motivation technique— (“Here is your star for good behavior, Sally”). But, hold your judgement for a sec!

This poster is a great way to represent all the investment to read those books— especially because many of them were borrowed or loaned.

People bring back masks from their trip to Africa, and seashells from the beach experience.

How can we remind ourselves of the funny, insightful or embarrassing digital life we live?

I saw a great cartoon that illustrates this:

“Mommy, why are there photos of everyone in our family, except me?”

“Because, sweetie- I post them all online.”

We can print photos. How do we print a chat conversation? How do we represent the 35th minute of our family reunion Zoom video conference, when uncle Billy fell off his chair, knocking his cereal and cat into the air?

I don’t know how we can yet. But, I know I need to be reminded of Uncle Billy, and the milk and the chaos that happened.

Listen now (2 min) | This installment of The Pomp Letter is free for everyone. I send this email to our investors daily. If you would also like to receive it every morning, join the 75,000 other investors today. To investors, One of the recurring themes in this letter over the last few weeks has been a “K-shaped” recovery. The idea is that coming out of the economic shock earlier this year, the wealthiest Americans were recovering quickly, while those without significant assets or income were continuing to struggle.

Source: The K-Shaped Recovery Is Now Undeniable

…as measured by the 2016 Chapman University Survey Of American Fears […] 30% about Obama’s birth certificate, and 33% about the North Dakota crash. This last one is especially interesting because there was no unusual crash in North Dakota when the survey was written. The researchers included it as a placebo option to see if people would endorse a conspiracy theory that didn’t exist. 33% of them did.

Source: Bush Did North Dakota | Slate Star Codex