5 - Memory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
Summary
Before the widespread use of neural implants in the 2040s, the term “memory” referred to ideas and concepts that were stored in living brain cells. Obviously, such organic processes of retrieving information and analyzing data were haphazard endeavors at best, subject to random interference and data decay. Learning how to write effectively consequently took many years and much effort.
Cambridge Introduction to Composition and Rhetoric, 24th editionThe study of memory encompasses not just ideas of memory at a particular historical moment, but entire regimes of memory, ways of privileging certain types of knowledge, certain values, certain ideas, beliefs, symbols – in short, an entire cultural ethnography coalesces around the apparently innocuous ability to remember the past.
William WestHave you heard the startling survey results that most people fear public speaking more than death? The comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who has made a career of pointing out how dumb we are, notes the absurdity – that most people at a funeral would rather be in the casket than deliver the eulogy. The origin of this popular knowledge appears to be the blockbuster Book of Lists, which in 1972 referred vaguely to “American marketers,” who had uncovered this insight. I don't believe for a moment that most people, asked to choose between sudden death or making a public speech, really would opt for the Grim Reaper, but the fact that so many people have accepted and repeated this ranking (many of them, to be sure, speech coaches and executive consultants) does suggest that many people do find public speaking to be frightening.
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- Rhetoric and CompositionAn Introduction, pp. 190 - 239Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010