Author: Wick

In the late 1890’s, a group of German psychologists were performing experiments to test the minds’ ability to remember short term. First, they gave a list of nonsense words to a group of people to memorize. A day later, they tested the group, who had no problems recalling the list. Second, they gave the same list to a different group to memorize, but this time gave a 2nd list of words immediately after learning the first. The next day, this group was unable to remember the initial set of words.

But in a third group, they gave a first list to memorize. Then after a delay of two hours, were given the second list to study. As with the first group, these had little trouble recalling the initial set of nonsense words. What does this tell us?

As noted with research on boxers in the late 1800’s, “a memory, even a strong one, remains unstable for a brief period after it’s formed.”

If you’re like me, you’ve immediately begun thinking about practical applications for something like this. Not the least of which – how to encourage families (including my own) to chew on the Word of God brought to the table each Sunday morning throughout the week? Or in schooling, how to make sure that when our children learn something, they can remember it the following day?

By slowing down the pace of life. By reducing the speed at which new activities come. After a lesson or message, paying attention to what comes next. Not jumping right into something that requires large amounts of thought. Of course we also know that reinforcing a topic through repetition, review, and discussion can all help in large ways also.

Which kinda makes the average school day seem less effective, as students move from attaching their brains to one hose of information to the next, with very little time in between to solidify the memory of that knowledge. It seems like it would do parents some good to try and “bring to the surface” each class individually from that day, and after each discussion give some downtime to allow those memories to catch. If anything, to try and schedule the class your student struggles in either just before lunch, or at the end of the day. Although then perhaps you have to fight the anxious distractions of “I’m just about to leave.” syndrome.

As for the Word of God that comes to us New every morning? That upon receiving it, we would spend time, either alone in quiet, or around a table (with food? 🙂 ) discussing and reviewing it together. Which points to meals together after church as being more than just a “nice Sabbath family tradition”, and more of a “vital Sabbath family practice” to encourage the long-term working of God’s Word in our hearts and lives.

In either case, if we want something to be remembered…we stay OFF the internet for a while after it. The immediate requirements placed on our working memory while we use the web fights against our brains ability to consolidate long-term memories and development of schemas.

Still processing through the book “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr. I recommend it for parents, teachers, youth pastors, pastors, professors, and anyone who may want to care for their own mind and the minds of others. It contains valuable insights into the human brain, and how it is being quickly rewired in ways that we would benefit from paying attention to.

Especially as a parent, I want to raise my daughters in such a way that they know things. Not just facts and figures, but actually know a subject, as opposed to simply knowing how to find what is known about it. One chapter in the book dives deep into the shallow and complex world of Google. Up until reading much of this, I’d assumed Google was simply another internet company, aiming to make money while doing whatever work it does toward new technology in the meantime.

As it turns out, there is far more going on in the Google empire. Carr gives many examples and quotes from Google’s own top dogs, that boil down to this:

“In Google’s view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can, and should, be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can distill their gist, the more productive we can become as thinkers. Anything that stands in the way of the speedy collection, dissection, and transmission of data is a threat not only to Google’s business but to the new utopia of cognitive efficiency it aims to construct on the Internet.”

“The last thing the company wants is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. Google is, quite literally, in the business of distraction.”

The god that Google has created out of “efficiency” leads to sacrifices. As they continue to grow, and achieve goals such as digitizing the texts of countless numbers of books, they encourage compartmentalizing cohesive thought, and deep meditation on single works becomes increasingly rare. Instead of carving out time to sit in quiet, and turning pages, I can merely click a button to get a snippet from a book – surrounded by advertising appropriate to my previous searches or the book I’m currently dissecting.

In the meantime, I recognize the giant amount of irony in quoting passages that point a finger at Google for dissecting books for selfish purposes. Added to that, the fact that most of my 20 or so readers every day find my page by clicking through Google. So smile at how silly I am.

Today I’m reachin’ back to Addie when she was a bit younger.  Remember, “mimi” means “bye bye”, and “oh” means “yes”….and, well….here ya’ go….