Stupid Questions

Last weekend while skiing Big Sky I shared a chair with a very successful man from California. He used to be an economist for Fortune 500 companies but has since retired and now spends his time writing research novels. He has written over five novels (only publishing one) while vacationing in various tropical islands. He happened to be in Big Sky Montana, riding the same lift as me due to a pact he made with his two friends (one a lawyer the other an Architect) to travel around the world riding different ski resorts each year (I should add this man was 75).We had a fascinating conversation while riding the lift up to the bowl, but one piece of advice he gave me continues to reside in my mind. When I asked him what led to his overall success he turned to me and very seriously said, “I asked the stupid questions. The stupid only get stupider. You have to ask the stupid questions.” I nodded like this was common knowledge, but later as I skied down the snow filled landscape taking in the sun I wondered to myself how much knowledge I had let pass me by simply because I had been afraid to ask the stupid question.
Here we are reading written accounts from "self-declared question askers'," people whom I regard as exceedingly intelligent individuals. What if Joshua Foer never explored the Memory Competitions or picked Ed's brain? Foer's novel Moonwalking with Einstein acts as testimonial to his success and did he ask stupid questions? YOU BET. What if he would have just accepted his role as journalist and settled with the "OK Plateau?" Should he have reached that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something he never would have found himself smack dab in the middle of a US Memory Championship. The more I learn about memory the more I realize you have to push yourself past where you are comfortable, you have to watch yourself fail and learn from the "stupid questions." That's how Joshua Foer improved his memory and how I will too (http://joshuafoer.com/moonwalking-with-einstein/faq/).

Other contemporary devices developed to improve a system or network of systems never would have came into being if an individual somewhere, sometime didn't ask the question why; like why an exclusive social network for college students didn't exist (Mark Zuckerberg), or why people forget where their car keys are (Joshua Foer), or why apples fall from a tree (Sir Isaac Newton), or why litteracy had to be hand written rather than mass produced (Johannes Gutenberg), you get my point. Stupid questions have led to innovation and products/services that change the way our world communicates. Facebook, for example has thrown away tools marketing companies used 5 years ago and replaced school texbooks with new age advertising possibilities. The universal expansion of the internet has led to a new generation of musy rooms. Before wide-spread use of the internet mental images were being recalled from photographs or memories only accesable to   the one trying to remember (the individual who was part of the memory). Now, a panda sneezes thousands of miles away and I can see for myself the funny noise it makes simply by logging onto YOUTUBE. My memory is now full of events, pictures and videos that I didn't experiance first hand- but rather discovered on the internet. A new "fad" within the viral-social-shairing-network is a new .com phonomonon known as "pinterest."


Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

YATES: The art of memory was a creator of imagery which must surely have flowed out into creative works of art and literature (91).

This is the perfect example to describe our generations "sharing of information." Now, as if status updates and comments were too much written literacy (I cringe as I compare status updates to written literacy), Pinterest introduces a social network consisting primarily of images.




I could make two lists right now. One consisting of everything I learned in my logic class last week and one listing all the fun DIY craft idea's I "pinned" to my pinterest account. I can assure you with confidence the pinterest column would almost triple my logic class. Why? As Ong wrote on page 82, "Technologies are artificial but artificiality is natural to human beings." I have grown up in a world surrounded by images and my memory reacts to a mental image I can pull out of my musy room rather than a formula my professor wrote on the board (surrounded by other formulas). Now if I turned a formula into a dancing Alligator eating in Orlando (A-->E--->I--->O) I will be more likely to recall the rules of testing for Validity. While pinterest is an easy memory recollection, I must push myself to recall Logic lectures. 

My Logic Professor often assists the class with handouts that require "mental push-ups." Mental Push-ups, as she says, will strengthen the brain and retain the necessary information. She might as well be reading straight out of Yates Chapter Four when he discusses the formation of imagery and the medieval memory saying, "the artificial memory begins to appear as a lay devotional discipline, fostered and recommended by the friars (91)." Discipline. Endurance. Strengthen. I might as well be headed into the mental gym every time I dive deeper into the realm of mental exhaustion Yates and Ong demand.