Every day on the train ride home I read as much as I can. Blog posts, marketing articles, magazines, books, the RedEye… I’m a knowledge junkie and I try and cram as much stuff in my head as I possibly can. Unfortunately by the time I take the train back the next morning, most of what I learned is gone.
For those who want to remember, Wired recently covered Piotr Wozniak, inventor of SuperMemo, an application that prompts you to relearn information at selected intervals so you’ll never forget. Here’s how it works:
SuperMemo is a program that keeps track of discrete bits of information you've learned and want to retain. For example, say you're studying Spanish. Your chance of recalling a given word when you need it declines over time according to a predictable pattern. SuperMemo tracks this so-called forgetting curve and reminds you to rehearse your knowledge when your chance of recalling it has dropped to, say, 90 percent. When you first learn a new vocabulary word, your chance of recalling it will drop quickly. But after SuperMemo reminds you of the word, the rate of forgetting levels out. The program tracks this new decline and waits longer to quiz you the next time.
Really the information we learn is never really forgotten, a tantalizing fact that’s backed up by Robert Bjork, chair of UCLA's psychology department.
Once we drop the excuse that memorization is pointless, we're left with an interesting mystery. Much of the information does remain in our memory, though we cannot recall it. "To this day," Bjork says, "most people think about forgetting as decay, that memories are like footprints in the sand that gradually fade away. But that has been disproved by a lot of research. The memory appears to be gone because you can't recall it, but we can prove that it's still there. For instance, you can still recognize a 'forgotten' item in a group. Yes, without continued use, things become inaccessible. But they are not gone."
Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? is a fascinating piece that explores how memory works and Wozniak’s obsession with retaining every piece of knowledge he learns.
It seems to be still too early for everyday use, but that’s owed more to the laziness of humans and our unlikelyhood of sitting down everyday and commiting to the process. But the article offers tantalizing prospects that an everyday person, if they wanted badly enough, could truly retain all the knowledge they wanted. This will be at the forefront of my mind the next time I have a vague recollection of a journalist to pitch for a new client or a marketing tactic that I read about two months ago that would be perfect now.
(Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? from Wired.com)
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