Could storing your brain free you up to be more creative?
by Julian Gratton
As I get older I’m finding my memory is starting to let me down. I rack my brain for hours on end, trying to remember things I used to be able to recall in a moment. It’s got to the point where I need to carry some form of notation equipment around with me everywhere… either a notepad and pen or my trusty iPhone for typing notes or recording voice memos.
Having lots of life experiences and memories is essential to becoming a great Creative. In my working life I have used memories from my childhood in adverts as well as experiences told to me by friends or colleagues in copy I have written or ideas I have concepted. Trouble is, as you get older the more you have to remember. And the more you have to remember, the more you find your brain lets you down.
If a scrap book's good enough for Paul Smith
Keeping a journal or scrapbook is a great way to store these memories… but as the years go by, it’s not that easy to store them and flick through them to find what you need. What I need is the ability to store my entire memory somewhere. Store everything I do, every communication, transaction and idea I make in a place that I can instantly access. Especially because being able to empty my mind of everything that is going on in my life enables me to indulge in creative thought.
The power of emptying your mind
Many Creatives know that a great time to come up with an idea is in that moment when your mind is clear and your head is free to think. For some people that moment comes just before they fall asleep, or when their eyes are closed and their body is submerged in the soothing waters of a hot bath.
What is essentially happening is an emptying of the mind. The removal of the daily worries of gas bills and workplace stresses. Practicing and emptying of the mind is nothing new. Thought leaders have been telling us for years it is one of they keys to enhancing creative thought… but one of my worries is that if I empty my mind… will I be able to recall the things that I have emptied?
Meet Gordon Bell
Gordon Bell knows all about memory. He’s a principal researcher at Microsoft and since 1998 he has been collecting a lifetime’s worth of articles, books, cards, CDs, letters, memos, papers, photos, pictures, presentations, home movies, videotaped lectures, and voice recordings and storing them digitally. He is now paperless, and is even beginning to capture phone calls, IM transcripts, television, and radio.
Since 2001 he reckons he has visited 221,173 websites, taken 56,282 photos, sent and received 156,041 emails, written and read 18,883 documents, listened to 7,139 songs and taken 2,164 videos.
All this information is stored in a database called MyLifeBits. The beauty of MyLifeBits, says Mr. Bell, is it gives you a sense of freedom… “You are able to offload your bio-memory…but you never delete anything…(you) just commit all of the facts to an e-memory.”
Bell’s experiences with MyLifeBits are documented in a soon to be released book called Total Recall. In it, Bell and his co-author Jim Gemmel explain what they feel will be the benefits of having an E-Memory. As the Total Recall site says:
Soon, if you choose, you will be able to conveniently and affordably record your whole life in minute detail.
Glorified scrapbooks of your life.
Keeping a scrapbook of your life is not exactly a new idea. But what is new is the sheer volume of your life you will be able to squirrel away on this E-Memory ‘scrapbook’. And with the peace-of-mind that everything you create and do in your life is stored in a place that is easily accessible… your brainpower can be fully utilised on more important tasks.
Instead of worrying about remembering to pay a Gas Bill or wondering who your mobile phone insurance is with… your brain is released from these mundane tasks to work on a higher plane.
Instant access to a lifetime of memories.
Just think. The Creatives of tomorrow really are going to have spoilt brains. Brains that no longer have to worry about remembering a great image they saw or a style of design they loved. They’ll be able to save all of this in their E-Memory and when the time comes that they need it for a concept or design they are producing… they can call upon it in an instant.
The concept of E-Memory may sound quite far-fetched but it’s already begun to be available to us all. Lifestream Backup, for example, makes a backup of your online life at Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Photobucket, and more… so the more information about your life you put on these things, the more information Lifestream backs up… and for extra safety it allows you to download the information to your computer.
But what about privacy?
We’re all familiar with the ‘identity theft’. And the onset of E-Memory could take this one step further… into what we might end up calling ‘life theft’. The proposal from Microsoft for E-Memory is for it all to be stored online… so ultimately there could be a server somewhere in the world with your life stored on it. For some this is a scary proposition.
But the benefits for people who rely heavily on their memories and life experiences, as well as things they create every day in their working lives, surely outweighs the dangers of ‘life theft’. Especially when you consider the freedom it will give your mind to concentrate on more important tasks such as creating the next big idea.
Tags: Advertising Concepts, B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Concepting, Creative Thinking, Digital Design and Marketing Thinking, Direct Marketing Agency, E-Memory, Effective Marketing Communications, Gordon Bell, Internet Advertising and Creative Thinking, Lifestream Backup, Marketing Services, MyLifeBits, Relationship Marketing and Creative Thinking, Strategic Marketing Thinking, Total Recall
