Authors at Google: Joshua Foer, "Moonwalking with Einstein"
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AtGoogleTalks
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On average, people squander forty days annually compensating for things they've forgotten. Joshua Foer used to be one of those people. But after a year of memory training, he found himself in the finals of the U.S. Memory Championship. Even more important, Foer found a vital truth we too often forget: In every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.
Moonwalking with Einstein draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of memory, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human remembering. Under the tutelage of top "mental athletes," he learns ancient techniques once employed by Cicero to memorize his speeches and by Medieval scholars to memorize entire books. Using methods that have been largely forgotten, Foer discovers that we can all dramatically improve our memories.
Joshua Foer was born in Washington, DC in 1982 and lives in New Haven, CT with his wife Dinah. His writing has appeared in National Geographic, Esquire, Slate, Outside, the New York Times, and other publications. He is the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura, an online guide to the world's wonders and curiosities. He is also the co-founder of the architectural design competition, Sukkah City. Moonwalking with Einstein is his first book.
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Tthe younger google people were more willing to discuss and engage in a conversation, but that geezer with the beard was trolling hard. He had incorrect analogies that was going nowhere. very disrespectful.
Just think how TV dumbed down the people. Sure, there exists informative channels, but there are millions of stupid ones too. the goggles would be the equivalent of a million channels and google would have a powerful position to guide how people seek info.
Foer has a valid point.
This reminds me of the "good will hunting" scene when the genius is faced with the fact that he could quote every art book ever written (michaelangelo) but had never seen the sistine chapel. Or if he spoke of war he would quote shakespeare, "once more into the breach dear friends", but has never been near one. It is really sad that people presume to know everything there is about a subject because they read the wikipedia entry on it.
Everytime a new mass media comes into the live of people, they are afraid. Books, radio, TV and now the internet - they were all demonized in the beginning. Don't be afraid. Just switch it off and read a book. Or read a book on the internet;). And it's defenitely much better to have more sources of information at hand. The more sources available, the more critical the people will get in terms of the quality of the source.
And you still can be a Thoreau.
I dare anyone to show me a kid who can name "50 to 100 species" of dinosaurs.
I dare you!
i know its kind of cheesy to say this, but its true, Josh 's book saved me, sort of
@Ficon0700 I'm SAYIN! Group dynamics were definitely at play here. They really didn't want to entertain the possibility that their technology could be causing deficiencies in information comprehension.
Great summary by the Google chair at the end.
I don't think the speed at which we obtain information or how easily we can access it has anything to do with learning and building expertise. I think it's our own problem if we're not using information resources effectively. If anything, it makes us work harder to distill and analyse all the information we have available to us!
I wish they would use an equalizer during these talks and cut off all audio beneath, say, 40 Hz. The annoying booming everytime he touches the podium would go away and we'd get clearer speech.
I wish google would hire professionals (or you kbnow, google the tutorials) on how to do a proper audio setup. Very amateurish.
I think the google crowd is having the right reaction here. I mean this is the standard kind of reaction of people who are afraid to technological advancement."Ahhh technology is going to eat us up we have to slow it down." i feel like its a fear of progress.
I was waiting for that too, but i guess they were all just too shocked to react...
It amazes me that you didn't hear someone in the audience yell "blasphemy!"
i wonder if he could remember every single face of the audience.
