{"id":37,"date":"2005-02-07T06:45:38","date_gmt":"2005-02-07T10:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/c-and-m\/"},"modified":"2018-03-25T11:40:49","modified_gmt":"2018-03-25T15:40:49","slug":"c-and-m","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/c-and-m\/","title":{"rendered":"Communication and Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s easy to discuss communication as though it were an external\u00a0<\/span>service, provided by tools and channels outside ourselves.\u00a0 But most communication successes and failures depend on memory, self-control, rhetorical skill, confidence… all traits which, though they project through different media with different fidelities<\/span>, begin with the mind.<\/p>\n

For now, let me take a stab at memory<\/span>.\u00a0 Those of you with\u00a0 perfect or near-perfect recall, pitch, or face-name association, help me out when I falter.<\/p>\n

Memory acts in bizarre ways.\u00a0 It is wholly unreliable at times, yet we depend on it for safety<\/span>, continuity<\/span>, and sanity<\/span>.
\n(Well, sometimes I am certain that we depend on the combination of memory with some external feedback loop with the rest of the world.)\u00a0 At times it is not there on demand, and at other times it comes to you unbidden.<\/p>\n

When I was a toddler, my parents once asked me what I wanted to drink, and I replied “a martini<\/span>“.\u00a0 This amused them for months.\u00a0 They rarely drank, hated martinis, and couldn’t imagine where I had heard the word.\u00a0 I can’t imagine either, but I bet I heard it exactly once (while my father was communing over his daily crossword puzzle, perhaps?) and part of my mind happened to think of it then.\u00a0 What I am <\/span>pretty sure of, is that the word popped naturally to mind.\u00a0 And I’d also bet I had hundreds of opportunities to answer similar questions, before such a question and such a random memory came together.<\/p>\n

Tonight, while minding my own business in the kitchen, that same part of my mind said, butting into a quiet train of thought about what to do
\nwith my noodles, “parenchyma<\/span>“.
\nHmm, I thought, what a funny thought to have.\u00a0 But there it was, lingering in my mind’s rear-view mirror; fifteen seconds later I could
\nremember the syllables distinctly.\u00a0 “<\/span>parenchyma<\/span>“<\/span>.
\nI couldn’t exactly remember what it meant, though it sounded medical in nature.\u00a0 Random thoughts like that — a snippet of melody, a name, a face (or, more often, one particular feature) — often push their way into my thoughts, but usually I can rationalize some association between that memory and some recent trigger.<\/p>\n

I felt quite sure I knew its spelling and pronunciation (despite having forgotten its meaning), but couldn’t recall ever having seen or used the word… Did I learn it when competing in my last spelling bee, in 5th grade, where I was knocked out early on at the city level for misspelling “obedience”?\u00a0 [oh, the shame]\u00a0 Or when preparing vocabulary lists in high school English class?\u00a0 I let it go.<\/p>\n

Looking it up now, I realize I learned it in high school biology under Ida Medlen<\/span>, one of the greatest teachers I’ve ever known.\u00a0 I can recall a lot about that class and each grueling lab practicum<\/span>, including the feel of the squid beak from my first complex dissection, but nothing remotely like the sights and smells of my kitchen.<\/p>\n

What else does our mind tell us, or hide from us?\u00a0 And to what\u00a0degree is our control over our minds limited by the depth of the tools we have to supplement it?\u00a0 Thoughts of the mental gymnast who built a room-sized kaleidoscope to help his memories, and the CBC? guide begun as an aging Physics laureate’s struggle with gradually slowing faculties, are left for another day<\/span>.\u00a0 Now it is lightening in the east, turning every quadrant of sky magnificent hues, reminding me to get on with my work here on our ball of mud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s easy to discuss communication as though it were an external\u00a0service, provided by tools and channels outside ourselves.\u00a0 But most communication successes and failures depend on memory, self-control, rhetorical skill, confidence… all traits which, though they project through different media with different fidelities, begin with the mind. For now, let me take a stab at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":930,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-37","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P7iVvB-B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/930"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4097,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/37\/revisions\/4097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}