More on Memory Palaces

[avad]

I bring up Memory Palaces not to necessarily encourage a return to the ancient art in its same form.
The Art of Memory and the Method of Loci (back in the days) was really quite an immense visualization trick...and a feat I think that few people today would consciously use. What I'm very excited about is the probability that we're entering a new phase in the internet and a new form of memory retention (which traces back to this concept of memory palaces) will become second nature to the masses:


What we're seeing happen here...is that 'memory palaces' are, can and will be made in 3d graphic interface. You don't as much need to 'hold' the whole building in your mind...as you BUILD the building and return to it over and over.
Think of computer games....the addictive warring kind even...those who play them regularly come to KNOW all the aspects of the various environments...they know that over 'here' are power-point giving thingies...and that at this point some flying bad guys will come out of that door to the right..and they have to jump to that stone and click on that button and whatever whatever to keep going... They learn how to move from room to room, landscape to landscape, level to level of the game, just by playing it...by tracing the steps and gathering a sort of 'memory-skill'.
Now what I'm terribly excited about and see happening...is a gradual reordering of the internet in just this way. Our ways of storing information for retrieval are just not cutting it anymore. I have tons of information stored in 'files' but the accessibility is diminishing with each new folder.

Or take for a good example LJ itself. Our entries are reverse chronological when accessed for the first time by a new visitor or even ourselves. A different sort of spatial organization is needed for me to be able to offer all entries relating to a certain topic etc. And that's what the 'memories' button is supposed to be for ...but I think we all know it is lacking....because it's still much too linear...too scroll-based...
Now try to imagine LJ in a more spatial 3d format...where instead of our user intro page...you land at a house or environment of the user's design...with information embedded (clickable) within objects in a more intuitive way...and think of all the connectivity possible...the portals..:)And by returning to this place over and over we naturally learn/remember where to find the information. And multiple searching tools can be utilized as well...
ok, so the designing of 'home-pages' (see the term, eh?) becomes more and more immersive. ...

"A hypertext with its clickable icons and images is like a memory palace and each link is a locus .When you click, the idea stored there appears as a new document.The only difference is that you don't have to memorize the structure . From this point of view hypertext is much more like the Camillo Theatre: a physical space where you learn by walking. Virtual Reality is essentially a 3D hypertext.You now navigate not only with the mouse but with all your body:the dream of Camillo becomes true.We can now build a place where you learn only by walking."
-from Giuseppe Zito's page on the Method of Loci.

I think that secondlife.com/islands is a perfect experimental platform for us..in that we can explore the building our own personal 'memory palaces' and connecting them with others in a shareable 3d realm... (ha, now you see my 'Connecting Islands' artwork tell its lil secret story/prophecy..;)

And just like in LJ, aspects of your memory palace can remain public, 'private' or 'friends only' as you choose.
So much to think about here.
I think I want to solicit the help of a 3d builder or architecture student to speed up my process in this direction. So that I might offer you all specific visual examples sooner rather than later....:)

Comments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I apologize for my earlier reticence. I used to be excellent at grasping complex conceptual problems, but a few years of serious depression really did a number on that part of my brain. It requires considerable concentration and the focus to keep returning to it again and again. I'm rediscovering these capacities nowadays, but sometimes I still lack the confidence.

This morning I explored another favourite question of mine: what is consciosness? And how can we explain the relationship between body and mind? This is related to the question of memory, don't you think? Although scientists can more easily explain how we store memories than how we experience things.

I've started storing links to articles at a website chrisglass pointed out: del.icio.us. The first time I used it, I thought, "This is interesting, but it's not much different from storing links in my IE favourites, and I don't travel enough to necessitate keeping my favourites portable, so the site is redundant for me." But today as I was reading articles and had this concept in the back of my mind, about creating a virtual space in which our experiences are connected like rooms along a corridor, I realized what an interesting platform del.icio.us provided. I can easily jump to see what other people are thinking about the same problems.

Your post reminds me of another experience I had when I was first online almost a decade ago. In January 1996 I came out of the closet, but I didn't know any gay people and was still quite homophobic. I knew I had to meet people, but was afraid to do so. One of my first steps was to connect through a gay talker, much like today's chat rooms, called Paradox. It functioned in telnet. It allowed me to meet queer people for the first time in a virtual space and move past some of my prejudices and misconceptions. That is another story altogether.

But one of the fascinating aspects of Paradox was its architectural virtual structure, which seemed lacking in the later chat room manifestations. Logging on, you would enter a public room that had a few rules of behaviour that were strictly enforced (making this queer space friendly for straight friends and underage people, too, which fostered a sense of community I never encountered in chat rooms afterward). Connected to the main room were a number of public rooms, also with certain rules of behaviour, dedicated to various purposes. When you entered a room, a descriptive paragraph would appear on the screen, and by typing various commands you could "see," "hear," or otherwise experience different aspects of that room through text. One room was an AIDS memorial. Others served as discussion forums.

Registered users could also construct private rooms. You could decorate these however you liked, creating an unique experience for whoever entered. Various commands allowed you to designate who your friends were, what degree of privacy they had, etc. You could construct portals between different rooms. Members could marry, designate children and so on. My first gay romantic and sexual experiences happened in the privacy and safety of Paradox, carrying me across a threshold to the point where I lost my fear of meeting gay men in person.

I don't use chat software anymore because I find it too distracting and time consuming. Besides, those experiences lack the creative richness I experiences on Paradox. Websites like Second Life must provide much more advanced interfaces for exploring and interacting with other people in virtual space. But I am still impressed with the way Paradox, using only text in relatively primitive history of the internet, created something fascinating, beautiful and (for me, at least) conducive to personal growth.

About five years ago when I wrote and posted articles on Themestream, I made much more use of hypertext to relate to other articles and ideas. Now that I'm contemplating renovating my personal website, all of these ideas provide nutritious food for thought.

[avad.livejournal.com]

thanks for all the input and links Van!:)

I've been Fascinated by the various social forums and explorations made possible by the internet. Chat and MUDs...The relative safety to explore aspects of ourselves that we are not yet confident about in real life....finding like-minded people, etc etc. Especially for your book you might enjoy:Envisioning Cyberspace (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0070016321/ref=wl_it_dp/104-2234855-6079155?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=IZYT94W87KIEJ&v=glance&colid=21Q9YVFDKXGDP) and its chapters on extending social space to cyberspace.
I had never seen del.icio.us before. B has his homepage set to linkfilter.net (http://www.linkfilter.net) which is a similar service and it is quite addictive for him!.
I think the existence of sites like these and the participation shows a great need in this area for 'shareable' findings and sources...
Personally it's the lack of spatial/graphic interface that bothers me so. del.icio.us is still set up much like our 'memories' section on lj which I can't get into because of the linear...scrolling..list..I neeeed something else!...hmmm
running on this thought...because one of the main things that I've longed for on lj IS a way to sort entries by interest more. Let's say I'm clicking on an interest on my user page. That will bring me to a page of communities and users who also list that particular topic as an interest. OK. Now if I click to one of the users I would like to be able to access FIRST any/all the entries which have to do with that specific topic.
Now perhaps there would be a tagging system that could be used when we are composing entries. At the bottom of the compose/update page after we've written our entry our interests 'chunk' could be there and we just click on the 1 or 2 or 3 categories we would like to bookmark it as related to.
so then if someone lands on our user info page...
they can go into that subject within our journal.
Now how could it be arranged better than the memories page? just brainstorming here for the 'inbetween' stage before complete 3d immersive...
And also for del.icio.us I suppose. What would make it spatially more intuitive and engaging..?
Or maybe I should skip the inbetween altogether and just concentrate on how it would be in something like secondlife.hmm

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

One of the things that amazes me about my son is the way he can navigate through computer games - it all looks much the same to me but he'll be able to remember where he's been and work out where he's going.

Have you looked at things like mind maps too?

[avad.livejournal.com]

I'm just amazed also by the addictive quality of the games...I never really got into them, just observing...but they must satisfy something VERY internal... And I mean comeon, if for CHILDREN alone we could restructure learning to compete with/be within a format as engaging as their computer games??!! They will surpass us in memory skills in no time.hehe


Re: mind maps. I have...not sure if what I've seen was a very basic version...but still didn't do it for me...because it still wasn't so intuitive visually

[unluckymonkey.livejournal.com]

I'm a VERY visual person for memory and now you're making me want to redesign my website to make sense of all the different aspects of my person. Somewhere I can send people to make sense of me but also a place I can expand on infinitely. When I try to tell people that I spin, weave, crochet, knit, draw, paint, make websites and now tattoo they either think I'm looney or I suck at all of the above because nobody does all that well. But I learned all in a more natural progression that makes sense and has allowed me to get a good handle on the subject matter before I see a thread running from that subject to another related learning experience.

Also I wish more people structured things for visual learners. these days they're trying to double up on everything in order for info to be absorbed but the people I find trying and being most successful is the ad companies. That's because it's wher all the money is. I would love to see a visual version of google.

Anyway you've set my mind in motion once again, hun and off it goes! I've been thinking for a while aobut redoing my website but now I have a good and more concrete idea from which to travel. :)

Maybe someday I can trade you some art for a website design. I think I could make something really beautiful for you in Flash but I would want to make sure I could comprehend and display all the ideas you work with in an accurate and effective manner.

[unluckymonkey.livejournal.com]

PS you are one of the few who can make me babble incoherantly. ;)

[avad.livejournal.com]

hey where'd my note go? I responded to this I really did!
hmmm now to try to remember what I said...
Oh, well I think I started with the fact that my dream of many years back that i keep referring to was in fact showing 'a visual google'.!
It was a search portal...but completely 3d immersive. and this was before I was personally even using the internet. weird no?

hmmm I'm intrigued by your idea of redesigning your site...but I'm not sure it's as necessary as you think. Your design now is quite good. I really like the splash page especially...and the view of you 'dreaming' shows how this is all a part of your mind in its different directions.
I guess I would lump the knitting, crocheting, weaving, felting, dying...and accessories made form these processes in one 'chunk', the painting/tattoos and web design in another. They seem to bulk together nicely that way and work off eachother.
But

[unluckymonkey.livejournal.com]

Yeah I like the simplicity of my homepage but I'd like something that captures more of me. that's my soft and fiber arty side and I'd like to make it show both. Still something simple mind you but jsut a little different. :)

[babayada.livejournal.com]

Perhaps this idea will flower in some kind of streamlined 3D desktop.

The system has to be as easy as pointing and clicking.

Navigating and typing files or what not ... it might be fun, who knows if people will use it or not? It'd be interesting to see how people would store information.

Both microsoft and apple are sort of moving away from directory strutures. They are abstracting from these structures and may make them completely transparent to the user.

Rather, the categorization and "structure" of info for the user will be dynamic. The user can assign categories to information and what-not.

I wonder if there are models for the 3d desktop that already exist on the net, hmmm?

[avad.livejournal.com]

intrigued!:)
more?

[babayada.livejournal.com]

Well, as far as microsoft goes, the last I saw was that they saw the way people use files is much like the way people use a database, so they wanted to incorporate database type functionality into their file system.

This way information is taken and presented to the user much like data from a database is taken and presented. The emphasis is on sorting information in a way that makes sense to the user rather than to the operating system.

Apple is doing the same thing but taking a different approach. Microsoft's file system is supposedly clumsy and slow. Apple decided to keep the file system pretty much the way it is but to build upon their already robust search technology.

In their upcoming OS you can build "folders" out of a variety of search criteria. You'll no longer have to drag and drop into folders. You just create a folder with a certain set of search criteria and there you are, your files will automatically appear in it.

This may ultimately free the operating system to store files in a way that makes sense to itself (and keep this transparent to the user) while the user can have files sorted the way he or she deems fit.

[avad.livejournal.com]

sounds good to me....
heh kindof works with the painting I'm working on these days which will probably be called
'Self-Assembling Memory Palace' which has shards of spaces and bits coalescing (ok, the movement is in my mind) into place....assembling like slow action snowflakes...!
mmmmmm

[babayada.livejournal.com]

Ever read Edward de Bono?

He writes about the mind being an environment in which information self-organizes.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Another thing I forgot to mention yesterday....

I understand perfectly your comments about computer games. In the summer my parents gave us—me and the girls—a computer game, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Marian and I played it obsessively (Brenna just wanted to watch us) for a couple of weeks until we had mastered it. That was in August. I still retain in memory the visual layout of the game version of Hogwartz and the grounds. I remember where to go to find Hagrid, chocolate frog playing cards, the entrance to the dungeons and so on.

I have an extreme dependency on learning things by doing them repeatedly, a fact that has often frustrated me. My experience of movies and books is entirely different from the computer game. I cannot recall the details of plots unless I have viewed or read them numerous times, and even then I cannot remember dialogue. I can visualize certain scenes, but must concentrate to fit them together in sequence.

So it is amazing to me to be able to recall the computer game Hogwartz so vividly. I see this idea could be a fertile tool for learning and communication.

[avad.livejournal.com]

exciting no??!! When these ideas first came to me (in the dream so many years ago) I didn't have so much of an understanding, it just seemed Very interesting and bizarre and 'futuristic'...but over time and with research it makes SO much sense as where we're headed NOW, that I get overwhelmed by it and the question of how to best take a next step.

Tags

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Here's more info pertinent to our discussion:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/centralasian/1234948.html

Re: Tags

[avad.livejournal.com]

ooh thanks!
I really like that site she linked to also-Operating Manual for Social Tools (http://www.corante.com/om/archives/032470.html) - will have to look around some more there!. Found mumminmamma longing for categories on a new post as well so I commented...and she brought to my attention that lj IS working on it for this year!:)

the following chunk pasted from the bottom of a long post called news:State of the Goat 2005 (http://www.livejournal.com/users/news/82496.html):

Plans for 2005
Looking ahead to the future, we plan to focus on a few key projects, while continuing to make improvements in all areas:

*Opening up ScrapBook — we're going to continue developing features, but our immediate goals are to finish the necessary documentation and offer accounts the ability to upgrade disk space.
*Journal usage statistics — our own web report statistics have become a lot easier to maintain, so we'll be investigating the best way to offer individual journal statistics.
*Event Subscription Notifications — a much talked about project on LiveJournal, we now have better means to bring it to fruition.
*Journal post categorization — we're in the planning stages of offering user-managed post categories, so that users can organize their journals better and readers can filter the content they want to see.
*Improved taskflow and usability — we've made a lot of improvements in our usability design practices while developing ScrapBook that we'll be using on LiveJournal projects.

so yay, they're on it! in that format at least. I'm looking forward to it. Many other sites have it already integrated.

So I think the 'inbetweens' will be covered as we blink our eyes so I'm going to just try to visualize and play around with the ideas of memory palaces and the meshing of lj and secondlife which will probably happen sooner than we think then! hehe.

Re: Tags

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

That's good news. Thanks for the links. :-)

[t3dy.livejournal.com]

i've been fascinated by the memory palace concept since reading frances yates' book "the art of memory" ages ago. LJ is the perfect vehicle for social memory palaces. more personal and authentic than the "blog" scene, imho.

have you seen this? fun.
http://www.synapse-archive.com/

i have a number of cool art of memory links on this site (have to scroll down)
http://www.geocities.com/t3dyhand/myst.html

[avad.livejournal.com]

hellothere!:)
Yes, I love the synapse-archive. I have that on my intro page as a link. Super site.

Thanks so much for the link to that page of links- wow you have accumulated a ton of interesting ones- on many things i'm interested in! I'm going to have to go through them slowly, very intrigued, THANK YOU!:)

[t3dy.livejournal.com]

hello.

funny, i had looked at your info page but missed that you link the synapse archive. silly me.

glad you dig the links. a longterm project of mine.
if you have links to other cool stuff you think should be up there, by all means send them along