Thank you for bearing the standard of the analogue. It's not just a generational or aesthetic issue, it's an issue of what embodied humans can use most productively. We are material beings in a material world. This matters in many more, and more subtle, ways than most people credit.
Now that we have applications like DALL-E, it should be possible to create automatically illuminated manuscripts, like medieval bibles. I wonder if that would help because, although I don't have a photographic memory, I often find myself imagining where something was on the page when I'm trying to remember something from a book. Obviously that's not possible with bare electronic text but illuminations might give the mind something to latch onto. It would also look cool.
I’ve had the exact same problem since the advent of e-books. Convenient as they are (I already have huge stacks of unshelved physical books looking for a place to live) I don’t remember them after they’ve been read.
I’ve thought a great deal about why this is. When I recall a physical book that I’ve read, I also inadvertently call up a set of associated memories that are permanently attached to that particular book - the appearance and cover of the book, the tactile sense of holding it and touching the pages, the quality of the paper and binding, the smell of leather if it’s an old book, the tung oil that was used to preserve it, the quality of light around me in the room as I was reading, the smell of logs burning in the fireplace or fresh air coming from outside. Every book I read as a child in our seashore summer house calls up the scent of brackish, salty water washing up under the boardwalk.
There’s a relationship between the contents of the book and these varying sensations that are linked to it, and that relationship appears crucial to forming a lasting memory.
In the study of how memory works, the associations are known as “anchors” and are used in memorization. They’re also made use of in hypnosis and hypnotherapy, to form a close association between a gesture and an emotional state, so that the state can be evoked or “triggered” through the gesture. An ancient method known as “Memory Palace” is the source of these techniques.
It seemed a great idea to be able to make and edit notes in the margins, but in practice it has proved useless. For me, physical books have a mental place in which they live. E-books, on the other hand, exist in a kind of mental void, as do the notes I make in them.
The way the notes I made in the ebook version of the Perry have simply vanished from mind is striking. Normally I remember electronic markups in legal documents I've drafted (legislation, or a lease, say). Not in another person's work of non-fiction, it would seem.
Sep 15, 2022·edited Sep 15, 2022Liked by Helen Dale
I could type 100 WPM with 95% accuracy on an old Olivetti typewriter. 40 years ago. My typing speed and accuracy have easily halved since using a computer. I miss that old typewriter.
Thank you for bearing the standard of the analogue. It's not just a generational or aesthetic issue, it's an issue of what embodied humans can use most productively. We are material beings in a material world. This matters in many more, and more subtle, ways than most people credit.
It's true. We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.
(I'm so sorry)
Now that we have applications like DALL-E, it should be possible to create automatically illuminated manuscripts, like medieval bibles. I wonder if that would help because, although I don't have a photographic memory, I often find myself imagining where something was on the page when I'm trying to remember something from a book. Obviously that's not possible with bare electronic text but illuminations might give the mind something to latch onto. It would also look cool.
I’ve had the exact same problem since the advent of e-books. Convenient as they are (I already have huge stacks of unshelved physical books looking for a place to live) I don’t remember them after they’ve been read.
I’ve thought a great deal about why this is. When I recall a physical book that I’ve read, I also inadvertently call up a set of associated memories that are permanently attached to that particular book - the appearance and cover of the book, the tactile sense of holding it and touching the pages, the quality of the paper and binding, the smell of leather if it’s an old book, the tung oil that was used to preserve it, the quality of light around me in the room as I was reading, the smell of logs burning in the fireplace or fresh air coming from outside. Every book I read as a child in our seashore summer house calls up the scent of brackish, salty water washing up under the boardwalk.
There’s a relationship between the contents of the book and these varying sensations that are linked to it, and that relationship appears crucial to forming a lasting memory.
In the study of how memory works, the associations are known as “anchors” and are used in memorization. They’re also made use of in hypnosis and hypnotherapy, to form a close association between a gesture and an emotional state, so that the state can be evoked or “triggered” through the gesture. An ancient method known as “Memory Palace” is the source of these techniques.
It seemed a great idea to be able to make and edit notes in the margins, but in practice it has proved useless. For me, physical books have a mental place in which they live. E-books, on the other hand, exist in a kind of mental void, as do the notes I make in them.
The way the notes I made in the ebook version of the Perry have simply vanished from mind is striking. Normally I remember electronic markups in legal documents I've drafted (legislation, or a lease, say). Not in another person's work of non-fiction, it would seem.
I could type 100 WPM with 95% accuracy on an old Olivetti typewriter. 40 years ago. My typing speed and accuracy have easily halved since using a computer. I miss that old typewriter.