Why We Forget Most Of The Books We Read

Remember those teenage days when you spent hours arguing with someone about the exact date The Doors launched ‘The Morrison Hotel’ album? Or those times you spent memorizing as much as you could about Tarkovsky’s movies, so you could then show off in front of your peers? Well, nowadays, in the internet era, which “functions as a sort of externalized memory”, we don’t do it as much. This article is not about the nostalgia of pre-internet times and how bad technology is, but about memory and how it’s changed to adjust to the times we’re living in.

The recall memory, scientists say, which is the ability to call information up in your mind, has become pretty much unnecessary, but recognition memory – knowing where a piece of information is and how to access it – is far more important.

Another aspect the article tackles is the binging phenomenon, when it comes to both watching TV shows and reading. I find the following very true about my habit of swallowing every reading material that I find: “It’s the momentary giggle and then you want another giggle. It’s not about actually learning anything. It’s about getting a momentary experience to feel as though you’ve learned something.”

And some advice about watching series: 

“The lesson from his binge-watching study is that if you want to remember the things you watch and read, space them out. I used to get irritated in school when an English-class syllabus would have us read only three chapters a week, but there was a good reason for that. Memories get reinforced the more you recall them, Horvath says. If you read a book all in one stretch—on an airplane, say—you’re just holding the story in your working memory that whole time. “You’re never actually reaccessing it,” he says.”