A while back at my
house in
Massachusetts, we picked up a new
phone with
speed dial.
Twenty items that we could quickly dial with the
memory, and two of the
numbers (it doesnt do up to ninety-nine, i guess). This was a great phone. It beat all of the others in clarity,
ease of use,
etc. What a marvelous
invention.
And then it hit. The death of memory. We could no longer remember phone numbers. The theory is, is that the current phone number system is so sucessful is that the
human brain can
memorize seven things at one, or in this case, an item with seven
different components. The brain, like any other thing in the body, can
atrophy (as it has with many people, but that's the topic of
another node).
So what became a good idea, eventually
crippled us into a family consisting of people who remembered their
aunt's number simply as memory-0-6. It was terrible. We joked about not being able to call home in an
emergency. I to this day, have
trouble remembering my
grandmother's number from the
experience. I vowed to myself that I wouldn't use speed dial for
anything ever again. That is of course, until i got a
cell phone....