I went to the movie theater today and I saw the movie Lucy. The movie is about a woman who is captured by some people who insert a new found drug into her stomach. The bag of drugs ends up exploding inside of her causing her to be able to access 100% of her brain. She was then able to remember every single little detail of her entire life. She had a perfect memory of everything she had ever experienced.
This immediately made me think about Smarter Than You Think because there is a specific chapter about memory in the book. In chapter two, the author Clive Thompson writes about how our memories are filled with errors. He says, " Some memory scientists suspect that when we misrecall something, we can store false details in our memory in what's known as reconsolidation" (27). Just imagine how many false memories we've stored in our brains that we don't even know about. We as humans only use 10% of our brain so imagine what we could do with 100%. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible to use that much percentage of our brains, so that is why we use technology to store our memories. We are unable to remember everything correctly, so we have become dependent on things like computers, phones, and the internet. Until we find new ways to access our entire brain, we will be dependent on technology to fill in that percentage.
Has anyone seen this movie? If you have, what did you think about it? I recommend watching it, it is very interesting.
-Jocelyne Vasquez
I saw Lucy the other day and being the science lover that I am, I thought it was amazing. Anyway, I'm reading The Shallows so I can't really comment on the connection between the movie and Smarter Than You Think, but I like the point you made on how we rely on technology to store our memories. It makes sense for us to rely on it due to our lack lack of brain capacity. I mean, Lucy basically knew everything about the world, and I’m over here trying to remember how to properly punctuate my sentences. By the way, the quote that you shared reminded me of this one thing I read a few days ago that said something about how when we replay memories in our head, we’re actually thinking of the last time we thought about it or something like that. I’m totally validating that quote about false memoires aren’t I? Anyway, it would be amazing to be able to retain information the way she could, but like you said and the movie pointed out, we’re basically stuck at 10%, at least for now.
ReplyDeleteIt is actually but a myth that we only use ten percent of our brains. We actually use much, much more of it. Although, I do see your point. Computers have actually been sort of an extension of our brain, like a flash drive. If the computer that is your brain forgets a certain file or a certain piece of information, you go to the flash drive. Personally, I was amazed by the stories of people who put video cameras on their body because I lose things a lot, and it would be much simpler just to review the tapes. The flash drive would contain a lot more information and be a lot more useful.
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