Improving Your Memory

        This video by TED Talks, is a video of Joshua Foer, a spokesman and a scholar that studies memory, explaining that seemingly extraordinary and impossible things to memorize are as a matter of fact possible and not as spectacular.
         Foer has mentioned that in today's world of technology, our memory is externalized and we do not need to fully depend on our own, fundamental memory anymore because of these advancements that can substitute our memory. Thus, our memory seems to be weaker and incapable of memorizing extensive details and long strings of patterns, pictures, numbers, etc. However, Foer continues to talk and he mentions the Baker/Baker Paradox. This paradox is that if someone were told to memorize the name of man, Baker, and if someone else were told to memorize the occupation of baker, the person that was told to memorize the occupation would most likely have a stronger memory of what he/she were told to memorize. This is because the name Baker, unless we know someone with that name, is significantly inconsequential and therefore we don't memorize the name with great care. On the other hand, the vocation of baker may be something that IS memorized with great care because it is something that we are strongly associated with: sells/makes bread, wears a tall, funny white hat, and smells good when coming home from work. Therefore, Foer states that in order to improve our memory, we must trivialize such seemingly impossible feats of memory and associate them with depictions that we are familiar with in order make us WANT to memorize them.
         I found Foer's technique of improving memory extremely fascinating because it shows that memorizing this is not doing in a verbatim manner but rather doing it topic by topic. Additionally, there is a creativity or emotion factor that plays in memorizing more effectively because by creating topics or images that help us memorize something, we are being creative or bringing back something that is meaningful to us in order to do so, thus it is a creative or emotional process as well.

Link:
Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do