Science behind the class

Surfing through Digg.com and i found this piece on the science behind the all-might memory.
It's interesting how easy it is to forget (kind of a topical term I guess considering) that there is actual science behind memory. After reading this piece its actually much easier to think of it as memory palaces and quiet desks. I mean I am not very scientifically inclined but it's far easier for me to wrap my head around the stuff Shaman Sexson has to say than this talk of elongated hippocampus and such.

It also got me thinking about what's more useful. While the magical and divine ideas behind what we learn in class is interesting to think and discuss, as an athiest its still just interesting to think about. The scientific stuff behind memory has more obvious real-world applications. alzheimers research is something that comes from the science of memory.

I guess it all comes back to a word that was used a lot towards the beginning of the semester, esoteric, the information we have been taught has little application on a mass scale but on a personal intellectual level it is incredibly useful and interesting.

So in the end I am most certainly not saying anything bad about the class but just hoping to remind everyone that the memory is more than just something that pulls tricks like remembering fifty independent film or drinking games, but something that we may take for granted until someone we love can't even remember who you are.

Dream Films

I have decided to write my paper on Films and Dreams. Many films have used dreams and dream logic to convey their message, this ties back to the Kane book where he talks about dreams being the beginning of storytelling in the oral tradition.

Right now I'm going to cover Eraserhead by David Lynch, and Synecdoche New York does anyone know of any other films that use dreams or dream logic? That would be incredibly helpful.

I was thinking of using Waking Life a film by Richard Linklater until i realized that it took place in a dream but had little to do with Dreams as a means of conveying story.

Memory and Storytelling

During class I started thinking about if we lived in an oral culture today. Mostly I thought about how cool novels would be. Instead of reading from a book to learn about the adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge throughout christmas past, present, and future, Dickens would have had to pass it down through time, each person it was passed to making his own changes. Getting "published" would be as easy as walking on the sidewalk finding a few passers-by and reciting a story you had thought out.

This idea actually reminds me of the end of Fahrenheit 451 when the main character discovers underground book lovers who have each remembered entire books and plan to keep them alive not through paper, but by repeating them to each other.