Writings: the memory of humanity

The memory of humanity has been possible by the creation of writing. Without this revolution, only a weakening or amnesic one would have existed. It took us an instrument to enable us to transmit, generations after generations, the knowledge acquired by every human being. The transmission of his knowledge and his culture is the definition of a collective memory. This collective memory is the tool that helps us to evolve as humans being. Without it our development would had been sporadic and deficient. This foundation that writing is for our collective memory had participated to an exponential evolution of the humanity as we know it.

These writings are for our collective memory what neurons are to our human ones. Humans will read writing archives. Then they will converse with their peers about their content. New ideas will emerge from these sources. The act of conversation and socialization will help the development of these new ideas. Eventually these ideas will be written by their individual authors and published. This specific act will enrich the collective memory. This is how it will change, grow, evolve and adapt.

I see writings as a meta-memory: the memory of collectivity. But they are part of a whole system of memories. This system start with the DNA: the primal memory of the Nature. Then we have brain’s neurons: the primal memory of many living creatures. Eventually we created something called writings: the primal memory of our societies.

Writings are part of a global memory system. It’s based upon them. What his fantastic is that this memory system is the foundation of other systems that help us to archives our collective memory. One of the most recent, and probably the bigger system, that is based upon writing is the Internet. This system has the potential to revolutionize the concept of the collective memory.

Writing is the thing that makes us what we are now: humans being of the 21 century.

Technoratie: [writing] [memory] [dna] [neurons] [internet]

“When do you do your best thinking? Come on. I mean really put thought into an issue, problem, opportunity, strategy, product line, competitor that you or your business is facing?”

I like this question asked by Todd.

Everybody have their own answer to this question. The one I’ll present is the one I’m normally using. It’s a method that I tested and developed over time to cope with the way my mind work.

Okay, I face a problem, an issue, an opportunity, what do I do?

First, I learn about it. I try to understand it as well as I can with the resources I have. I try to learn the true nature of the thing. Without this knowledge, I couldn’t be able to do anything.

Sometimes, I’ll find the solution only by doing this. In this case, I’ll be really happy and will spend my saved time to drink to it. The problem is that resolving an issue only by doing this is rare.

If I don’t come up with a solution after hard work and explorations, I stop to think about it. I start to work on another non-related thing; I do something manual: doing sport, going outside, etc.

I have two goals by doing this.

The first one is to free my mind.

The second one is to stimulate it with new external stimulus. I do this in hope to create new connections in my brain; to see, unconsciously, the thing with another point of view.

If I’m lucky, within a day, a week or a month a hint will show up in my mind: a track to follow to resolve my given problem. My unconsciousness has then talked.

Its how I generally work: I feed my unconsciousness with the given problem then I let him think about it, waiting for a hint.

What I learned while developing this method? Patience and confidence. I needed to develop a confidence in my preliminary works and searching. I had to have the confidence that I done the good things to come up with a solution. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it but I knew I was on the good way. So I used my thinking method to try to come up with a solution. Then I needed to develop my patience to wait to see the results. Without any of these two things, the method would be useless.

Technoratie: [Mind] [think] [problem] [issue] [strategy]

It was raining outside. I was looking at the depressiveness of the day. The snow was vanishing with the rain. The teacher was talking about Heraclites, Socrates and Plato. A philosophy class–the perfect place where to muse.

What would I do in the future? What he look like? What do I have to do to try to enhance it? All choices were of importance at that time. I was emerging from my childhood to enter in my adulthood. Since that time, all choices I take has a repercussion on my future.

I was musing on these questions about my future. I was not in the mood to continue my studies for another 4 or 5 years. I had a flash: I wanted to stop them right now to see another part of the world. It’s exactly what I done. I got a summer job and gone to Europe the next autumn. I wanted to see the old continent.

I saw it. I have been to all main capitals of Europe. I was expecting something exceptional. I saw exceptional buildings, houses, parks and museums. Yeah they were exceptional, but they were only buildings, houses, parks and museums.

I was searching for something that I wasn’t able to explain what it was. It was not spiritual. It was a vague idea; something that I wasn’t able to focus on. I was wandering everywhere. I wasn’t taking attention to buildings anymore; it was not what I was searching for.

I was trying to understand what I was doing there; what sent me there. I had lost interest in buildings and architecture but I found interest in people. I talked to them, I mused with them. We talked about their countries and families. I tried to understand them for what they were. I found friends.

I found people. It’s what I always found in my trips. It’s the focal point of all of them. Now, what motivates me to go to a specific place is the curiosity I have to understand the people that live in this place. I want to know their culture; I want to understand it; I want to muse about it. To reach this goal, I need to talk to these people. I need to live with them. Buildings don’t talk; people do.

It’s why I done 12000km of bus. Because the focal point of my trip was in it: talking to people that came from around the world. It was my mobile house; a place where I invited people to talk; a place where I slept.

Do I found what I was searching for? No. Peoples aren’t the thing I was searching for? I don’t know. Will I found it? I hope so. The only thing that I suspect is that I was searching for something at 5000km of my home when this thing could be just there.

people trip Europe life culture

Our memory is associative. You’ll remember complete scenes when you will ear a sound, see an image or smell an odor. Our brain doesn’t work linearly. It does multi-tasking, link ideas, thoughts and sensations one between the other.

Why don’t we try to take these characteristics into account when we are taking notes, doing brainstorming or just trying to clarify our thoughts? This is exactly what Mind Maps try to handle: the non linearity of our brain’s processing.

What are mind maps? There is a Mind Map I done to write this article:

It’s easy to write a text based on these keywords and the links they have one between the other. There is my presentation of what are a Min Maps, how it works and their benefits compared to traditional linear note taking.

Mind Maps are based on the fact that the brain doesn’t process things linearly and that our memory is mainly associative. They take these characteristics into account to help us to structure a subject. By this method, it will be easier to remember what the subject was about with a simple look at the Mind Map.

This is a new note taking method. It will present, consolidate or summaries information on a selected subject. The system will relate each idea between them. These links will show you the relation, semantic or symbolism, between your ideas. This note taking method will help you to clarify your thoughts, in your brain storming and will show you new facts. It’s much easier to incorporate new ideas to these schemas than in a linear text.

How these mind maps are created? It’s firstly the result of your personal style. It’s recommended to personalize your Mind Maps because it reflects your thinking. They are composed of colors, images, keywords and lines. To express the non-linearity of the method, you should put the main subject of the Mind Map in the center of your page. To know how to build these Mind Maps, I suggest you to visit these web sites: here, here and there.

What are the benefits of using Mind Maps? It helps you in your creativity process. It will help you to see things with another point of view. Why is this working? Because it take into account the non-linearity of your brain. It takes into account that your memory is associative by only using keywords, images and colors. The whole process will made your notes much easier to review and remember.

Why I talked about Mind Maps? I know this method since a while but I was reading this article and I found the idea to handle the non linearity of the brain and memory with such a system really interesting and I wanted to write about this idea.

Technoratie: [mindmap] [brain] [notebook] [writing] [idea] [creativity]

Some months ago I saw the presentation of “Les 7 Sommets” by Jason Rodi. This is the story of Jason and his father climbing the topmost mountain of each continent. It was unreal. He was commenting his film during the presentation. He said many things… to many things. He was talking about his project and the benefits of it; he was talking about his new vision of the world and how it came in his life:

“Imagine a circle.

See it as if the life is imprisoned in it.

All attainable things are inside the circle: having wife, going to university, having one or two children, having a good job, having friends, etc.

Outside the circle, you have all other things: going to the moon, having 20 children, climb the Everest.

When you success to accomplish something outside the circle, he shatter, and the limits vanish… everything became attainable.”

Jason Rodi reached the Everest.

Technoratie: [life] [Everest] [mountain] [climbing]