Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell [57]
Ken is a volunteer hockey coach. He has several e-books on coaching, Internet articles, and notes and recordings from a number of coaching clinics he has attended. He often watches other teams practice and picks the brains of other coaches to discover new drills and approaches. Ken’s view of the game borrows from many sources but is unique to him. He loves to mull over his notes and diagrams, to look at video clip examples of certain plays, and then present his insights to his players in a multimedia “chalk talk.” Ken loves learning the game and will never stop comparing approaches, connecting dots, and gathering examples.
I could go on multiplying such examples: the mother of a dyslexic child, ever learning about how to better prepare him for the world, the layperson with a deep religious interest, and the countless jobs that deal with rapidly changing information, from lawyers tracking evolving case law to contractors dealing with building codes. Lifelong learning is both a necessity and a joy.
What I find fascinating is that once our learning is self-directed, without any education system telling us what to do, we all act like little professors, just like the scientist that Bush had in mind. We gather material, arrange it, create links, add notes, and generally make sense of it all. We call up bits of it to help put together our next idea.
Arranging one’s material is very important. A Total Recall system ought to let you organize, classify, or taxonomize the material you are taking in. I believe there is a very strong case to be made that you don’t really have a grasp of your material until you have built a mental model, a structure, such as a taxonomy or mind-map, under which you classify the information being absorbed. A good e-memory will help you arrange material this way for retrieval by classification, and will help you visualize your classification and modify it as your understanding evolves.
A good e-memory lets you step back from information hunting, out in the wilds of the Web, to do some understanding farming back on your home turf. If the Web gets us through the research phase more quickly, if e-memories help us refind and organize our knowledge more quickly, then what do we have more time for? Reflection. Anyone wanting to learn and understand will be doing more pondering, more reflecting, more searching for clues and connections to understanding. Vannevar Bush’s imagined memex scientist “ponders over his notes in the evening.” So will farmer Dan, coach Ken, and countless others.
Just as the World Wide Web enabled an era of increased research, Total Recall will enable an era of increased reflection.
CHAPTER 7
EVERYDAY LIFE—AND AFTERLIFE
I have a hand-loomed blanket from the late 1800s, handed down from my grandmother Bell. Grandma had seven boys and three girls who, in turn, produced twenty-five grandchildren, including me. The only remaining mementos of her are half a dozen photos, a Bible, a dresser, and the blanket. As the older generation passed away, the Bible was passed on to the remaining eldest son, and eventually on to the grandsons. At each transition, there was inevitably a heated dispute over who ought to inherit the Bible, although none of the clan was especially religious. When it was my turn for the Bible, I declined, but I happily accepted the virtually unknown blanket, which was surreptitiously given to me by a favorite aunt who had been caring for Grandma.
This beautiful blanket, now used as a wall hanging, is one of the few physical