about

Purpose: In the last few years, I have learned many things about techniques for remembering things effectively, both from books and from a lot of practice. Before the printing press was invented, memory was very important because books and paper were both rare and expensive, so the only way the average person could keep information was in the mind. But now that there is so much printed and written material available, apparently people do not think it is that important to memorize things anymore (because it is easy to look something up). As a result, we are no longer taught memory techniques in schools, and any information about memory techniques seems to be very hard to come by.

A lot of my sentiments are expressed below in an Email message that was sent to me by Robert Dean Wood:

“I was never exposed to any method or memory techniques in school, I was told to memorize various things, but never how.

“My dad was a bright and intelligent man who had only two years of business college, but during his first year he was taught various methods of how to memorize. The second year he was exposed to what would be today a four college course in Business Administration. The methods he learned were used throughout his life. At age 83 he could remember a list of 50 items given to him verbally and retain that list for months.

“I say our present school systems should take a long hard look at this method. Poor grades are the result of the student not remembering the answers and not because they don’t want to, but becausethey don’t know how.”

Even though books and computers have made it very easy to access information, I believe that it is still a valuable skill to be able to remember many things easily. Many school classes still require people to memorize things (such as formulas). The ability to memorize names of people is an important social skill. Having information in memory helps you make better on-the-fly decisions because you have more facts to base your decision on. And so on…

The purpose of The Memory Page is to share the valuable information that I have about memory with anyone else in the world who is interested in learning.

 

History

March 1994

After learning so much about memory myself and having great success, I wrote a document called “How to Improve your Memory” to share with my friends what I learned. I even gave it to my Psychology instructor, and she distributed it to the whole class! Several months later I revised the document.

Spring 1995

“How to Improve your Memory” is made available on the World Wide Web (as a student-created page at Michigan Tech Univ.).

Fall 1996

After having received Email from several people who were very interested in my “How to Improve your Memory” document and who were asking me questions, I created “The Memory Page”, which is actually a collection of related documents on memory. This way the information that I formerly had shared only in Email could be shared with the rest of the world. Traffic is measured at 10 hits/day.

Early 1997

Since I was graduating from Michigan Tech, the Memory Page moves to a new home on Geocities. By now, the Memory Page is advertised in several popular search engines, and traffic increases to 35 hits/day.

August 1998

The Memory Page moves again to “PremiumHealth.Com” in a strategic relationship in which I provide a small amount of advertising space in exchange for a hassle-free location without irritating GeoCities advertisement banners and an easier-to-remember URL (web page address). Amazingly, traffic is now over 100 hits/day.

March 2000

Web site graphical redesign featuring the artwork of Kodi Dennison.

October 2000

Memory page traffic reaches 300 hits/day!

March 2003

The Memory Page moves again, this time to a permanent home with its own domain name: www.thememorypage.net