Mnemonics in the 21st century
Jack Rosenthal has written an interesting article on mnemonics which raises some good points:
Why is it necessary in this information age to remember most things, except maybe your user name and password(s)?
I’ve long thought that with increasing technology capabilities it becomes less important that you know something, but instead that you know where to find something. In other words, meta-knowledge (knowing where to get information and being able to see connections across various sources) is increasingly becoming more useful that just knowing something flat-out.
For example, five years ago, prior to having a cell phone, I actually bothered to remember phone numbers. Now I simply rely on my cell phone to memorize my contacts for me.
In a sense, it’s like we are outsourcing our memory to systems, so that we can free up space for more meaningful thoughts and ideas.
Reminds me of the GTD practice of purging your brain of things to do in order to stay more focused.
0 Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.