Thursday, September 15, 2011

Couple of links about memory

Couple of links related to books I read recently.

Stephen Colbert had interviewed Nicholas Carr, who in his latest book, The Shallows (my blog post), wrote  that thinking of the Internet as offline memory, on tap at all times, almost infinitely extensible, and just as powerful and identical to the human brain's memory, is a fallacy.
There was a short segment on Colbert Report on the same topic. Watch for yourself.

Embedded video from The Colbert Report

On the topic of memory, Amazon.com has named Moonwalking with Einstein (see my blog post) one of their ten best books of the year so far, and #2 in nonfiction - so blogged the book's author, Joshua Foer.
Watch this example of the technique of "Memory Palace" at work in this video.

Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (see my blog post on the book, and my review on Amazon.com), walks us through the process of constructing “memory palaces”—an age-old memorization technique currently exploited by the world’s leading memory champs and mental athletes. Psychologist and memory expert Lynn Nadel explains why this trick is so powerful and how it leverages some the brain’s strongest faculties. 
Joshua Foer had also appeared on Stephen Colbert's show.

Embedded video from the World Science Festival video


Kindle Excerpt of The Shallows



Kindle Excerpt of Moonwalking with Einstein



© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.