A NYT’s article today (Sunday, Sept. 16th) in the Week in Review is called “Britney? That’s All She Rote”. Using Britney Spears’ dismal lip sync performance at the MTV Music Video Awards show, author Jenny Lyn Bader notes how much the act of “memorization” has dwindled. It used to include phone numbers, names and faces, and even passages from Shakespeare. Now it’s pretty much down to passwords for programs that remember things for us. How do these sweeping cultural shifts (from oral to written culture for example) affect how we understand memory loss?
