Monotony Collapses Time. Novelty Unfolds

To The Extent That Experience Is The Sum Of Our Memories And Wisdom The Sum Of Experience, Having A Better Memory Would Mean Knowing Not Only More About The World, But Also More About Myself.

Once I'd Reached The Point Where I Could Squirrel Away More Than 30 Digits A Minute In Memory Palaces, I Still Only Sporadically Used The Techniques To Memorize The Phone Numbers Of People I Actually Wanted To Call. I Found It Was Just Too Simple To Punch Them Into My Cell Phone.

Over The Last Few Millennia We've Invented A Series Of Technologies - From The Alphabet To The Scroll To The Codex, The Printing Press, Photography, The Computer, The Smartphone - That Have Made It Progressively Easier And Easier For Us To Externalize Our Memories, For Us To Essentially Outsource This Fundamental Human Capacity.

Once Upon A Time, This Idea Of Having A Trained, Disciplined, Cultivated Memory Was Not Nearly So Alien As It Would Seem To Us To Be Today.

Evolution Has Programmed Our Brains To Find Two Things Particularly Interesting, And Therefore Memorable: Jokes And Sex - And Especially, It Seems, Jokes About Sex.