Augmenting Long-term Memory
Augmenting Long-term Memory
Michael Nielsen<br>| Y Combinator Research<br>| July 2018
Augmenting Long-term Memory
Toward a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Using Personal Memory Systems to Understand Mathematics
The Humane Use of Augmentation
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By Michael Nielsen
One day in the mid-1920s, a Moscow newspaper reporter named<br>Solomon Shereshevsky entered the laboratory of the psychologist<br>Alexander Luria. Shereshevsky's boss at the newspaper had<br>noticed that Shereshevsky never needed to take any notes, but<br>somehow still remembered all he was told, and had suggested he<br>get his memory checked by an expert.
Luria began testing Shereshevsky's memory. He began with simple<br>tests, short strings of words and of numbers. Shereshevsky<br>remembered these with ease, and so Luria gradually increased the<br>length of the strings. But no matter how long they got,<br>Shereshevsky could recite them back. Fascinated, Luria went on<br>to study Shereshevsky's memory for the next 30 years. In a book<br>summing up his research ("The Mind of a Mnemonist", 1968), Luria<br>reported that:
[I]t appeared that there was no limit either to<br>the capacity of S.'s memory or to the durability of<br>the traces he retained. Experiments indicated that he had<br>no difficulty reproducing any lengthy series of words whatever,<br>even though these had originally been presented to him a week, a<br>month, a year, or even many years earlier. In fact, some of<br>these experiments designed to test his retention were performed<br>(without his being given any warning) fifteen or sixteen years<br>after the session in which he had originally recalled the<br>words. Yet invariably they were successful.
Such stories are fascinating. Memory is fundamental to our<br>thinking, and the notion of having a perfect memory is<br>seductive. At the same time, many people feel ambivalent about<br>their own memory. I've often heard people say “I don't<br>have a very good memory”, sometimes sheepishly, sometimes<br>apologetically, sometimes even defiantly.
Given how central memory is to our thinking, it's natural to ask<br>whether computers can be used as tools to help improve our<br>memory. This question turns out to be highly generative of good<br>ideas, and pursuing it has led to many of the most important<br>vision documents in the history of computing. One early example<br>was Vannevar Bush's 1945 proposal**<br>Vannevar<br>Bush, As<br>We May Think, The Atlantic (1945). for a mechanical<br>memory extender, the memex. Bush wrote:
A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books,<br>records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it<br>may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an<br>enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
The memex vision inspired many later computer pioneers,<br>including Douglas Engelbart's ideas about the augmentation of<br>human intelligence, Ted Nelson's ideas about hypertext, and,<br>indirectly, Tim Berners-Lee's conception of the world wide<br>web** See, for example: Douglas<br>Engelbart, Augmenting Human<br>Intellect (1962); Ted<br>Nelson, Complex<br>information processing: a file structure for the complex, the<br>changing and the indeterminate (1965); and Tim<br>Berners-Lee, Information<br>Management: a Proposal (1989).. In his proposal for<br>the web, Berners-Lee describes the need for his employer (the<br>particle physics organization CERN) to develop a collective<br>institutional memory,
a pool of information to develop which could grow and evolve<br>with the organization and the projects it describes.
These are just a few of the many attempts to use computers to<br>augment human memory. From the memex to the web to wikis to<br>org-mode<br>to Project<br>Xanadu to attempts<br>to make<br>a map of every thought a person thinks: the augmentation of<br>memory has been an extremely generative vision for computing.
In this essay we investigate personal memory systems, that is,<br>systems designed to improve the long-term memory of a single<br>person. In the first part of the essay I describe my personal<br>experience using such a system, named Anki. As we'll see, Anki<br>can be used to remember almost anything. That is, Anki makes<br>memory a choice, rather than a haphazard event, to be<br>left to chance. I'll discuss how to use Anki to understand<br>research papers, books, and much else. And I'll describe<br>numerous patterns and anti-patterns for Anki use. While Anki<br>is an extremely simple program, it's possible to develop<br>virtuoso skill using Anki, a skill aimed at understanding<br>complex material in depth, not just memorizing simple facts.
The second part of the essay discusses personal memory systems<br>in general. Many people treat memory ambivalently or even<br>disparagingly as a cognitive skill: for instance, people often<br>talk of...