To Improve, We Must Watch Ourselves Fail,

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.

Our Culture Is An Edifice Built Of Externalized Memories.

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.

Languages Are Something Of A Mess. They Evolve Over Centuries Through An Unplanned, Democratic Process That Leaves Them Teeming With Irregularities, Quirks, And Words Like 'knight.'

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.