D.K.Vaid
Rote learning has been a sacred tradition through ages and through countries. Memory then had to work over time as there was no support system available to lighten the burden of brain. The ‘hippocampus’ was none the worse for that. This region of the brain, which is key to the memory has a tendency to shrink, if not kept pulsating. Mercifully, it loves two things to remain active. One, a regular open air physical activity; two, a regular memory training. Sadly, the modern generation is lacking in both. The results are certainly disturbing.
A new abundance has emerged. Abundance in poverty! Poverty in fitness, poverty of remembering things! And an effort to seek sustenance in machines is what the modern man is trying to do, to manage this new found poverty. Running in open is getting fast replaced by running on a tread mill and information/knowledge storing has been taken over by machine.
The white information spreading across the space may be more correct on facts and figures, but the reckless absence of ‘grey’ (read grey matter) in their ‘white’ (white information) keeps it cold and lifeless. There is a more serious threat, as well. The fast growing habit of using computer memory, we may call it sim memory also, or rather entire dependence on it, in place of brain memory may allow the hippocampus to shrink slowly but steadily. This apprehension may sound foolishly over-reaching or a cry wolf, but homosapian is said to have lost its monkey tail only because of its disuse.
A study conducted by the Institute of Neuro Science at Trinity College Dublin, has found that one third of the British people under the age of 80 cannot remember their own phone numbers. I don’t find it strange. It is as simple as the fast dying habit of storing your monthly provisions in your kitchen store with coming up of Malls at a stone throw. When Big Mall with its excellent storage facility is only a hundred metres away from your house, you prefer to make short term purchases as per your consumption and avoid the inconvenience of bulk collection of victuals and the arrangement of their storing as per need priorities.
When telephone numbers can be stored in a cell, why keep them on the shelf of your memory. Yes, why? Only that over a period of time your kitchen store, because of being in disuse, may get fungous-plants and consequently turn unfit for storage. This danger is ever greater in case of our memory cabin. If not used appropriately for the purpose it has been devised, it may gradually shut its shutters. This will leave us to either lead a compromised life or scout for a memory trainer. Like life coaches, these trainers lately, have come to earn immensely well, because of duds like us. A good many of us have, in last few decades already paid huge bills to this new breed of experts called Life Trainers. And only because we are reckless and managed not our minds well! Are we going to repeat this for our memory too, by allowing technology to memorize everything for us and thus putting our memory to jeopardy?
Technology overuse by children is being viewed by psychologists as e-addiction, sharing characteristics of other addictions; emotional shut down and lack of concentration being the principal ones. A study has found newly discovered and serious mental illness called ‘internet use disorder’ and has been included in International Psychiatric Manual. Gurukul style rote learning may have its parrot fashion and failures, but it was an excellent exercise in memory training. There is nothing like ‘Bad Memory’, claims Ed Cooke – a Grandmaster of Memory.
Cooke insists that the key to remembering is learning to think in more memorable ways. He began teaching himself memory feats at eighteen, when he had to be on a hospital bed for three months. To impress the nurses, he began practicing as long as eight hours a day. He can now learn 1,000 digit number in an hour and has evolved several memory training techniques. The forgetful author Joshua Foer was persuaded by Cooke to take part in the World Memory Championships which the author chronicles in his 2011 best seller: ‘Moon Walking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.’
Memory training is not a game, but a necessary valuable skill. That is why this occupied a prime place in ancient Indian learning system (in China, as well). In the west, it was first described in a Latin textbook called Rhetorica ad Herennium written between 86 BC and 82 BC. It calls a memory an ‘image’ and the space it occupies in mind a ‘place’. Providing ‘place’ to ‘images’ has been our quick-stable-memory mechanism too. Modern memory is fading because we are not storing the memory i.e. ‘image’ at its right ‘place’ viz. our brain. We like to store it in machines.
Joshua Foer in his book ‘Moon Walking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything’ advises us to build ‘memory palaces’ for quick recall i.e. associate a thing you want to remember with a vivid image. Latest research in neurobiology and cognitive science has now concluded that IQ, long thought to be largely unchangeable after early childhood, can in fact be raised and not by a niggling point or two; through enhanced understanding and chiseled memory. Learning attentively, memorizing poetry, learning new languages and skills are said to be improving the cognitive function. Brain scans show that handwriting engages more sections of the brain than typing. Even putting off your Blackberry and letting your brain idle away can help you in being creative; as it allows an increased activity in white matter while the brain is at rest.
Ed Cook is not actually cracking a joke when he says, “I have a theory that it is in the interest of tech-giants to make us as empty headed as possible. They want us saying, ‘Oh! How do I get back to my house?’ so that they can sell us something to help.” When our fingertips fiddle with the mouse to open internet, a whole new world opens before us. But when well oiled mind and memory is at play, a rich imagination comes into being. Knowing your stuff is like nourishing your eyes. An appropriate lens enhances the sight of a myopic eye, but if you close the eye lids, the lens can’t make us see and turns into a useless accessory.
Place your PC only after your ‘hippocampus’, not before it. The later may get annoyed. Lest you lose your way to home and knock at a hostile door! After all, the address you have stored in your sim-memory will only see the screen if you press the right buttons. And your memory alone will get you to those buttons. In this mind versus machine gambit, I will vouch for the first for a personal reason too. The machine has never come out for me with a Misra Saeni, the second line of the couplet. The second line also comes out from the same source, as the first one came from. But if you have a machine with the imagination of a poet, please lend me the same for a few weeks, as I am struggling hard to complete my new poetry book. Memory, thoughts, imagination and choice of words – the inputs for the verse, are great leisure lovers. They don’t open up promptly like your internet. But as they unfold languorously, the world stops. And listens (sic.)!
(The Columnist with his pen name as Darshan Darshi is Dogri writer and a Sahitya Akademi Awardee.)
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