Typical travel scenario for me: I've just cleared security and I'm on my way to the gate. Not 30 seconds ago, I had my boarding pass in hand. Now I've put my shoes back on, put my laptop back in its bag, put my watch on, and...where is my bloody boarding pass? Coat pocket? No. Other coat pocket? No. Obvious, less obvious, or extremely unlikely pocket of compter bag? No. Outer pocket of carry on bag? No. Stuck in my paperback? No.
Oh, no--I must have left it on the other side. Now I have to go back and explain things. This will be fun.
Wait.
Shirt pocket. That's it. There it is. (Whew.)
Somewhere in the midst of shoes, watch, coat, and laptop, my short-term memory lost track of the boarding pass. Pretty sad, when you consider the accomplishments of these folks:
But it sure was hard not to feel stupid watching three dozen people who had, in just five minutes, memorized the positions of 52 cards in a shuffled deck and were now happily organizing cards in a new deck into the same order as the pack they had memorized.
"I can feel my brain curling up into a fetal position in shame," whispered one onlooker, who identified himself as a professor of statistical science at a New York university. "I feel very small and very ... limited right now."
Interestingly, the people who perform these amazing feats of memory claim that they're using very simple techniques that anyone can learn. I'd like to learn some of those techniques, although I think what would help me most at the airport would be using an ancient and arcane practice called "paying attention."
Still, I wonder how far these techniques go. I'm sure these people have no trouble remembering the name of everyone they meet at a party, but would they have an advantage in, say, trying to learn a foreign language? We're rapidly approaching the day when upgrades to our brain power will be no more unusual than plastic surgery is today (and a lot more useful.) I suspect that our brains are already more upgradeable than we realize.
via GeekPress
Posted by Phil at March 4, 2004 06:32 AM | TrackBack