Introduction

Bradford Vivian, Anne T. Demo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingForeword/postscript

Abstract

But the results of one’s hypothetical internet search will also yield, interspersed among these predominant findings, a smaller number of old-fashioned resources: personal memory aids. One can easily access in cyberspace a variety of organizations boasting improved memory skills for a diversity of personal applications, from college students studying for exams to elderly people hoping to offset the cognitive effects of aging. Such resources of personal memory training represent contemporary self-help equivalents to the classical ars memoriae, the art of memory with which students in the Greco-Roman and later European traditions acquired copious knowledge of the arts, humanities, and sciences by acquiring habits of powerful mental recall. A simple internet search thus provides a suggestive juxtaposition between contemporary technologies of memory and the classical art of memory, between impersonal media of instant data retrieval and the personal discipline of rigorously honing one’s capacities for memorization and cognitive agility over the course of a lifetime.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationRhetoric, Remembrance, and Visual Form
Subtitle of host publicationSighting Memory
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages1-12
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9781136633546
ISBN (Print)9780415895538
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2012

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Arts and Humanities
  • General Social Sciences

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