A Look at Foer’s Masterpiece on the Past, Present and Future of Memory

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The End of remembering

A look at Foer’s Masterpiece on the past, present and future of memory

  Through an English Composition class at University of North Dakota, I was introduced to the author Joshua Foer, a Yale graduate, who wrote the bestseller moonlight walking with Einstein. In his bestselling book and through the section the end of remembering, Foer presented a brief, yet a profound and somehow comprehensive review of our use of memory, reading and writing. He offered an intriguing summery of the changes reading and writing had gone through to assert his point of view.

The writer’s journey of becoming the 2006 United States memory champion explains the brilliance, genuineness and convention behind Foer’s article and the argument presented in this piece. (Bartholoma, Petrosky, & Waite, 2014).

Joshua Foer in the end of remembering posits an argument on the prominence of memory in today’s age. He opens his argument effectively: “today it often seems we remember so little”. Foer goes to assert his point by recounting how technology assists him in remembering what in the past we had to remember by heart without assistance. Foer provides examples of birthdays and phone numbers that he used to remember by heart but technology made it unnecessary to remember them anymore, a handheld device could do that for Foer and for the readers too.  

Joshua argues the decreasing role of natural memory. He discusses the development of writing and reading, their relationship to memorizing and eventually to today’s age of lifeloggin and information indexing.  He takes his readers on a journey to the past by introducing Theuth, the Egyptian God and the inventor of writing, a gift that was presented to Thamus, the king of Egypt. Theuth said of writing: “my discovery provides a recipe for both memory and wisdom” (Foer, 2011). A point of view that Thamus discredited citing his fear of men forgetting and relying on writing: “if men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls.” A point that Foer uses to support his argument. Foer continues with his journey introducing Socrates and the importance of memory in his days. This leads Foer to walk his readers through the evolution of script, from the scriptio continua a no space, no punctuation writing on long scripts to the introduction of spaces. Foer discusses the scriptio continua resemblance to the way we speak and continued to discuss the evolution of writing and that of reading through the stages of adding spaces bonding books to our present day. Foer discusses the importance of indexes in comparison to our human brains and humans being walking indexes; he asserts this argument through the introduction of lifelogging which means archiving our memories into a surrogate memory.  

  Reading Foer’s work intrigued me into thinking of all the mystical activities the brain does, processing data and the logic it offers. I find myself in disagreement with the conclusion of the decreasing role of natural memory.

    Foer debates the importance of remembering, how thoughts are being memorized and orally communicated.  “Today it often seems we remember very little”. (Foer, 2011). Foer presents brief evidence through history of the decline for the need to memorize. His display of proof seems to support his claim. Although his point of view could be valid, I am in disagreement with it. His essay may suggest that we are becoming passive readers rather. We seek to identify where we can find the information rather than reading actively. “An active reader is not necessarily a person with good memory”. (Bartholoma, Petrosky, & Waite, 2014) I strongly believe that reading and writing are not only a function of memorizing what was read and what has been written, but a function of knowledge that one’s use when needed and this puts the concept of active reading into play where memory is a function of recalling information not reciting the information.

Foer affirms the importance of memory but focuses on illustrating the decreasing role of our internal memories in relation to the technology and what it can offer to support or even replace our internal memories. Foer uses Socrates description of writing and its relevance to memorization: “ it would be singularly simple minded to believe that written words can do anything than remind one of what one already knows” (Bartholoma, Petrosky, & Waite, 2014).  By quoting Socrates’ words,  Foer presents the issue of remembering as a single dimension stripping the reading from its original purpose of offering knowledge, information, an opinion, or an argument rather than being only a method, or a vessel to present information, or remind ones of what they already know. I would pose the question on how much technology has effect on active reading and learning.

As Foer had mentions in his article, Socrates’ writings were passed on through the functions of writing, reading and memorization which prove that reading and writing is a method of passing on the information and the knowledge through generations. While I disagree with the idea presented by Foer that reading is becoming solely a function that offers “cues for remembering” (Foer, 2011), I do agree that one of the functions of reading and writing is to offer cues for remembering, to recall the information learned through active reading in addition to the knowledge, data presentation, point of views and the attitude of the writer and also that of the reader.

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