Caution: Externalized Memories Ahead
Joshua Foer at the Athanius Kircher Society Meeting, 2007 Joshua Foer, a young writer who also happens to be the younger brother of both novelist Jonathan Safran Foer and former New Republic editor Franklin Foer, published a book called Moonwalking with Einstein in 2011 about studying "the art of memory," an approach to memorization that was reputedly developed by Simonides of Ceos in ancient Greece wherein one would store individualized pieces of knowledge in particular places (memory loci) within an imagined physical space (your memory palace). The book is an easy read and isn't particularly technical, although there are some brief, interesting historical explorations and several humanistic meanderings in an attempt to answer questions Foer has about memory (in particular, there's a short discussion of epithet repetition in Homer's Odyssey that's plenty of fun to read). Memory has been on my mind for some time now—particularly, the benefits a