Quotes by Joshua Foer - Page 2

Growing up in the days when you still had to punch buttons to make a telephone call, I could recall the numbers of all my close friends and family. Today, I'm not sure if I know more than four phone numbers by heart. And that's probably more than most.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Buttons
Close Friends
Growing Up
Heart
Numbers
Phones
Phone
Friends And Family
Phone Call
Punch
Recall
Telephone
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How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention to the human being across from us who is talking with us, by being so lazy that we're not willing to process deeply?
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Iphone
Lazy
Losing
Short Life
Talking
Deeply
Human Being
Paying
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The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we'll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Book
Easier
Impact
Importance
Ipads
Wonder
Books
Ipad
Mostly
Rediscover
Richer
String
Text
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During the Middle Ages they understood that words accompanied by imagery are much more memorable. By making the margins of a book colorful and beautiful, illuminations help make the text unforgettable. It's unfortunate that we've lost the art of illumination.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Art
Beautiful
Book
Colorful
Illumination
Imagery
Lost
Margins
Memorable
Middle
Middle Ages
Understood
Unforgettable
Accompanied
Ages
Text
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All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Attraction
Culture
Exchanging
Explorers
Kissing
Mouths
Pacific
Saliva
Africa
Americas
Considered
Apparent
Cultures
Immediately
Mouth
Revolting
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Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Disappear
Exercise
Long
Long Life
Monotony
Next
Novelty
One Day
Papers
Passing
Sitting
Life Time Long
Life Time Daily
Eat
Live
Blend
Bound
Daily
Day
Short
Experiencing
Spend
Unfolds
While
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'Moonwalking with Einstein' refers to a memory device I used when I memorized a deck of playing cards at the U.S. Memory Championship. When I competed in 2006, I set a new U.S. record by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute and 40 seconds. That record has since fallen.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Cards
Championship
Deck
Fallen
Memories
Memorizing
One Minute
Records
Seconds
Used
Since
Device
Set
Einstein
Record
Minute
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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.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Cell Phone
Memories
Numbers
Palaces
Simple
Squirrels
Cell
Phone
Memorize
Minute
Punch
Reached
Squirrel
Techniques
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I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Ashamed
Despite
Dozen
Fluency
Hebrew
Israeli
Lifetime
Praying
School
Years
Admit
Good Never School
Besides
English
Languages
Degree
Good School Never
Particularly
Newspaper
Spanish
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If you were a medieval scholar reading a book, you knew that there was a reasonable likelihood you'd never see that particular text again, and so a high premium was placed on remembering what you read. You couldn't just pull a book off the shelf to consult it for a quote or an idea.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Book
Ideas
Likelihood
Medieval
Particular
Premium
Reading
Reasonable
Scholar
Consult
Placed
Pull
Quote
Remembering
Shelf
Text
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Our lives are structured by our memories of events. Event X happened just before the big Paris vacation. I was doing Y in the first summer after I learned to drive. Z happened the weekend after I landed my first job. We remember events by positioning them in time relative to other events.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Jobs
Vacation
Memories
Our Lives
Paris
Relative
Summer
Weekend
Landed
Event
First Job
Positioning
Structured
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There are two possibilities: Either the kiss is a human universal, one of the constellation of innate traits, including language and laughter, that unites us as a species, or it is an invention, like fire or wearing clothes, an idea so good that it was bound to metastasize across the globe.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Including
Innate
Invention
Laughter
Species
Traits
Wearing
Possibilities
Unites
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What distinguishes a great mnemonist, I learned, is the ability to create lavish images on the fly, to paint in the mind a scene so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. And to do it quickly. Many competitive mnemonists argue that their skills are less a feat of memory than of creativity.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Creativity
Forgotten
Memories
Paint
Scene
Skills
Argue
Competitive
Distinguishes
Feat
Unlike
Images
Lavish
Memory
Quickly
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We've forgotten how to remember, and just as importantly, we've forgotten how to pay attention. So, instead of using your smartphone to jot down crucial notes, or Googling an elusive fact, use every opportunity to practice your memory skills. Memory is a muscle, to be exercised and improved.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Crucial
Elusive
Forgotten
Notes
Pay Attention
Skills
Muscle
Every Opportunity
Importantly
Improved
Jot
Memory
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Some memorizers arbitrarily associate each playing card with a familiar person or object, so that the king of clubs is represented by, say, Tony Danza. The grand masters associate each card with a person, an action, or an object so that every group of three cards can be converted into a sentence.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Kings
Clubs
Familiar
Groups
Masters
Three
Associate
Card
Converted
Grand
Object
Sentence
Tony
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We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Art
Habit
Insight
Invention
Lasting
Memories
Our Lives
Altering
Bundle
Networks
Extent
Gradually
Habits
Shaped
Produced
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Photographic memory is often confused with another bizarre - but real - perceptual phenomenon called eidetic memory, which occurs in between 2 and 15 percent of children and very rarely in adults. An eidetic image is essentially a vivid afterimage that lingers in the mind's eye for up to a few minutes before fading away.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Bizarre
Confused
Fading
Phenomenon
Vivid
Essentially
Lingers
Memory
Photographic
Occurs
Perceptual
Rarely
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Woodworking requires a completely different kind of thinking and problem-solving ability than writing. With writing, you take a set of facts and ideas, and you reason your way forward to a story that pulls them together. With woodworking, you start with an end product in mind, and reason your way backward to the raw wood.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Facts
Problem Solving
Thinking
Way Forward
Writing
Backward
Different Kind
End Product
Forward
Product
Raw
Requires
Wood
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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.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Technology
Alphabet
Capacity
Computer
Human Capacity
Memories
Photography
Printing
Printing Press
Fundamental
Millennia
Outsource
Scroll
Technologies
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If you want to make information stick, it's best to learn it, go away from it for a while, come back to it later, leave it behind again, and once again return to it - to engage with it deeply across time. Our memories naturally degrade, but each time you return to a memory, you reactivate its neural network and help to lock it in.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Degrade
Going Away
Information
Locks
Memories
Return
Across
Naturally
Deeply
Each Time
Engage
Go Away
Later
Lock
Network
Stick
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When I climb into my car, I enter my destination into a GPS device, whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have photographs to store the images I want to remember, books to store knowledge and now, thanks to Google, I rarely have to remember anything more than the right set of search terms to access humankind's collective memory.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Knowledge
Car
Access
Destination
Google
Humankind
Spatial
Thanks
Books
Photographs
Climb
Collective
Device
Enter
Images
Memory
Rarely
Terms
Search
Store
Whose
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The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just don't get appreciably faster. That's because it's become automatic. You've moved it to the back of your mind's filing cabinet.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Example
Faster
Filing
Moved
Type
All Day
Automatic
Cabinet
Certain Level
For Example
Getting Better
Level
Ok
Plateau
Reach
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To attain the rank of grand master of memory, you must be able to perform three seemingly superhuman feats. You have to memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour, the precise order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in the same amount of time, and one shuffled deck in less than two minutes. There are 36 grand masters of memory in the world.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Cards
Deck
Feats
Masters
Memories
Order
Precise
Superhuman
Two
Time World Must
Attain
Perform
Time World Memory
Master
Grand
Hour
Memorize
Rank
Seemingly
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The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Art
Creativity
Memories
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Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character. Competing to see who can memorize more pages of poetry might seem beside the point, but it's about taking a stand against forgetfulness, and embracing primal capacities from which too many of us have became estrangedmemory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.
Joshua Foer / Journalist
Character
Memories
Party
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