This book describes the journalist/author's discovery of, and subsequent participation in, the U.S. Memory Championship, despite having what he describes as an "average" memory. A person with an "average" memory, come to find out, can be trained to remember significant amounts of data (numbers, faces, poetry) using memory techniques employed by scholars and historians who used them to remember information passed on orally before printed books became common. These techniques are quite effective even if today we would find them cumbersome. Turns out Americans traditionally don't rank with the elite mental athletes at the World Memory Championships and the author guesses it's because Americans have a future orientation rather than the ability to focus on the past. That, or we're easily distracted. Hey, something shiny!
No comments:
Post a Comment