LOCI TechniqueMan cannot understand without images; the image is a similitude for a corporeal

thing, but understanding is of universals which are to be abstracted from the particular.

Thus, in the choosing of an image to represent aspects of thought, it is admitted that the

image is only a mental version of a concrete thing, but on this is based the understanding

which allows the abstraction of universals from particulars. The image of an object relates

to specific material facets of the world, from which general abstract deductions may be

drawn,

we require the experience of concrete things to lead us to abstract the universal

from the particular, but the deductive process itself is facilitated through the memory and

the experience of concrete things. Human cognition is stronger in regard to sensibilia.

The mind works better when dealing with material things. Cognition, understanding and

integration, as a mental process, is more effective when dealing with the material aspects

of things than in dealing with pure abstractions.most people learn more efficiently through real experiences than through

abstractions that are not grounded in experience.Backgrounding Technique (BT)

The technique

I call itBackgrounding Techique(BT). Previously it was known as BFT (Behind->Front Technique), but in my opinion that was a stupid and confusing name for such a good method. The new name represents the main idea very accuraterely - the goal is to make the images you've already placed along the journey to be visible - you see them in background, youbackgroundthem. The easiest way to do it is to generallymove backwards, as opposed to the way we usually walk.

When I saygenerally, Idon't mean always. For example when you are in a room, then it's very convinient to just stand in the middle and rotate yourself, thus you don't move at all. I'm saying one could try moving backwards if the place is convenient for it, and when it benefits (see the 2 reasons below and when exactly they're useful).

For example, look at this Josh'spicture:

It starts moving down the stairs (backwards), then side-ways, forward, then perhaps standing before the door and rotating yourself through the loci 7-13, and finally again backwards down the doorstep. All in all you try to move naturally. But in general we did move backwards, and a big part of the loci are visible all the time.

For example, take the stair. When we're at the current locus (say 3), we like to zoom in to it to place the image, and of course at that moment we don't think about the images we placed at 2 and 1. But then we move on to 4, and what will our mind do in that brief moment? It likes to zoom out to better navigate the place, and why not use that moment to see all 3 images in the background (BG)? This is for 2 reasons:

1. You fix the images better in your memory.

2. It's super easy to link these images this way.

Here I must emphasize that thisisn'twhat you want to turn your attention onwhen you're doing mnemosports- then you just jump from one locus to another, and don't think about the images you've already placed; essential is achieving the max speed, and those things will only slow you down. But ineducation?Then this technique suddenly becomes very useful.

You don't have to even think about the "passed through" images. Just occasionally seeing them in BG will aid in memorization, since your unconscious mind still processes them. It's good to take a pause to consciously review them, when you've already placed a bunch of images (say 5-10) and start forgetting the first ones. And you'll also be consciously thinking about them when you start making links/associations between them, that's what the whole education is about: connect new info to the one you've already learned.

But what would have happened if you had moved up the stairs - you go 5->4->3->2->1. Now it's just more bothering to zoom out, your mind doesn't need to do it to navigate any more. And thus you never see the images in BG: for review/making links between them you consciously have to move back to 5. Also the same happens when you're rotating yourself - in order to see all images together, you consciously have to think yourself floating high above the room, and then make the necessary links. Whereas moving backwards it comes more naturally, since loci themselves move to the BG without you having to think about it.

So, that was the basic idea about the technique -moving backwards makes it easier to review/link images.Aboutlinkingin education:

In mnemonics we can link P and O via A (PAO), we associate them into the same chunch. In education that P doing A to O is just an observation, it yet doesn't have a specific causality in it. What caused what? Did P cause a change in O via the A? Or does (PA) mean that there must be only that particular O: (PA)->O. So, you see, in mnemonics we usually purely rely on our associative memory, we just observe, the links don't have much causality in it ( (PA) could have done that do any O, not that particular one; it did it to that O because it just did, it doesn't need a reason).

On contrary, in education much more is needed - the more associations you make, the more beneficial it usually is. Everything is linked and has a reason for happening; and the better you understand the reasons, the better you can predict what will happen in certain situations, and do your job. Now, are you starting to get why linking images is useful? And not just in palace, not spatially and even not visually, but all the time just thinking and thinking about the associations - trying to find them, comparing them, categorizing them, and trying to deduce what's missing here. Don't let palaces, visualization or any mnemotechnics slow you down if you're having a good idea or have to study/do your job quickly, then just brainstorm and write it down. Later when you have time and decide it's worth it, do the mnemonics to better retain it in your memory.

On the topic - here I meanspatial linkingin the palace. Comparing, grouping and deciding which images are more important than others. Then it's good if they can easily seen in the BG. And that can be achieved when considering the technique I described above. Still, don't let it become unnatural. E.g. if instead ofgenerallymoving backwards you do itall the time, then what you get is a straight line, and that's bad: linear journeys are never good - it's bad to navigate and memorize them.

Examples from education:

Cause and effect

These are all old examples. I have placed the cause behind the effect, since we move backwards (cause comes first).

1. Social sciences - history

We like to learn the events following the timeline - from past to future. Let's try to let the past events be seen in the BG, which will fix them better in your memory, and allows you to easiy make the links between them.

For instance:Molotov-Ribbentrop pactallowedGerman to invade PolandandSoviet Union to invade Baltic states. We place the pact up the stairs, and the invasions at loci 2 and 3 respectively. See how super easy it is now to just take a peek up the stairs again, and tell yourself:yes indeed, soon Hitler and Stalin made the pact real: one invaded Poland, the other Baltic states.

If we moved up the stairs and placed the items to 3, 2 and 1 in that same order, then at 2 and 1 we won't see the pact in BG any more, and we may forget to consciously link them to pact (if you notice that you rarely make any links between your thoughts/images, then your learning technique is poor; consciously making links helps you to better understand the material, and also better memorize it).

So, this is just an idea how to place things. Obviously you can't follow the system all the time, because when you get more and more events you start getting links between very far events.For example, locus 103:50 years later, Estonian delegation went to Moscow, and protested against the still-lasting occupation, claiming that the pact contained an untold conspiracy between Germany and Soviet Union (who had "the right" to invade which country).So, by that time you may be in another palace already. Also, you won't be always moving bacwards (loci 7-13). Then you can just zoom out and connect the events side-ways.

The following examples 2 and 3 are for science learners, and are more advanced.

2. Physics - System+equations. Causality.

1. When solving a problem, you have:

1. The system you want to describe

2. Already-knowequations

3. Final equation you try to find

When you try to visualize the first one, you get asketch(that's what you used to draw on paper when solving geometry problems or physics exercises). Then you look at the sketch and think:hey, I already know some formulae/equations that can be applied to this sketch(e.g. if there is a circle, then maybe using its area formula A = pi*R^2 will help you further). And then you transform and combine thosealready-knowequations to get to the final equation.

I'm not saying you should take all of them from your paper and place them to your palace. But if you have an exam coming, and you have to be able to make that long derivation to the final equation, then you could place some of the derivation along the journey. Especially the sketch (where you highlight the initial equations in your mind), and the final equation. What aids even more in memorizing an equation, is when you let the sketch-geometry and the equation interact with each other.

For example you placed the right-angled triangle, and it remains visible when you move on to memorizing the equation. Now you let the parts of the equation float to the right place onto the triangle. It helps you to associate symbols with their meaning.

Here I try to visually associate the Ideal Gas Law symbols with its BG sketch (gases of Mount Doom :-)

Clickhereto read the full example of memorization this equtionHere'smy full up-to-date tutorial for memorizing equations.2. When we are not so mathematical, then it's better to think in terms ofcauseandeffect. We just try to visualize, which also great scientists like Einstein liked to do all the time. For example when an atom absorbs light (1), it's electron becomes excited (3). The effect isn't always excitation, instead it could also increase the vibrations in the molecule the atom is bound to (2). Or make the atom emit more light than it absorbed (4; the effect used in lasers).

Now just visualize the stair and fluently try to play them through in your mind: 1->2, 1->3 and 1->4. Cool isn't it? Note that I wanted 3 and 4 to be next to each other, because they are similar (both apply to single atom, don't need to be in a molecul) - another link made.

3. Maths - proving theorems

In math every theorem has a presumption and statement (deduction). I had to memorize/prove more than 100 definitons/theorems twice - first semester forMathematical analysiscourse, and the following semester forAlgebra. Both ended with written exam, picking ca 5 random theorems and/or definitons we had to prove/explain.

What I made my routine was that when starting to prove a new theorem, I also placed its title on a single A3 sheet and drew arrows to illustrate which theorems/definitions above I used to prove the current theorem. While proving it I also placed some images into palace {trying to visualize (sketch) the presumption&statement + a glimpse of some equations/theorems I used to prove it}.

This is something of what my A3 sheet looked:

Later at exam when proving a theorem, I first thought of the A3 sheet - it gave me very good overall view of the theorems/definitions (won't mix them up), then tried to remember which theorems above I used to prove the current one, and finally jumped into the palace where I'd placed theto-provetheorem, and it gave good overall reminder what I had to do.

And now, a year later, I can still remember a lot of these definitions/theorems.

So, again were using what you already know to link to/prove/predict sth new. The final example illustrated how complex it can go, and in that case how useful the right placement (A3 sheet) can be.

I'm going to take a break here; soon going to update the following examples.Grouping

Cause and effect can also in a way be thought as asuperclassand itssubclass(from programming languages or biology). We use it to store info that can be grouped into classes and subclasses. Because the subclass has all thepropertiesthat its superclass owns, we only need to store the superclass properties and we don't need to place again these properties into the subclass loci also. We just place superclass with all it's properties behind and subclass starts after its superclass (we build a border between them). Now we just add these extra properties that only the subclass has.

4.Biology - catsWe have superclass :Cats. Its subclasses:PantherinaeandFelinae. Pantherinaemembers: lion, tiger, leopard etc (here super- and subclasses are actually Family and Subfamily if to speak in terms of taxonomy).Felinae members: home cat, cheetah, lynxes etc. I place my cat (it symbolyses class Cats) into the living room (which is most behind), Pantherinae and Felinae go to kitchen and dining room respectively (kitchen and dining room are in front of living room, dining room right of the kitchen). Kitchen: I let a lion prepare a cake, tiger serves it and leopard cleans up afterwards. Dining room : my white kitten sits on a chair and eats the cake, cheetah runs circles around the table and begs some leftovers, lynx climbs on the table and steals the cake (this is calledlinking).To remember theproperties(the thing that all members of a class share)I use the members of the class. Cats: all its members look like a cat, they can protract claws out and are carnivores. My brother sits on armchair watching football. Hungry cat sticks her claws out and starts clawing the sofa, demanding brother's attention. Brother doesn't notice, so the cat attacks my brother, bites a collop out and fills her hunger.These properties expand to subclasses' Pantherinae and Felinae members too, I can visualize e.g. how a random member, e.g. the tiger walks into the living room, replaces the cat and starts eating my brother.Properties of Pantherinae: they roar. Lion preparing the cake starts roaring. Felinae: they are usually smaller. My kitten becomes even smaller and gets lost into the cake it's eating.

5.Physics - elementary particles.Elementary particles can be divided into fermions and bosons. Fermions can be divided into quarks and leptons. Each class has its own properties (quantity of spin, existence of mass, electrical charge quantity).

6.Math - differential equationsThere are first order equations, 2nd order and so on. 2nd order can be linear (subclass of second order), linear homogenous with constant coefficents (sc of 2nd order linear), linear nonhomogenous with constant coeffeicents (sc of 2nd order linear homogenous with const coefs). When we solve the last one we need first to know how to solve an equation from its super class (a homogenous with const coefs). We place the method for solving its super class equation behind and the extra technique (e.g. variation of parameters) that is necessary to solve the nonhomogenous equation in front. To solve the nonhomogenous eq we first take the method from behind (we always see that), solve its homogenous equation and then use the result to solve it's nonhomogenous part (using the variation of parameters technique). Voila! Equation solved!

This kind of placement system has proved really effective for me (especially when I compare my new palaces with to the older ones, where I used not to divide my palaces into linear journeys and walked forward, not back). My later subjects in maths and physics just become subclasses of the previous ones and I can see how exactly they are derived from their previous ones.And as I already said, there is no point of memorizing without understanding.Calm down, if it was too much to grasp at once:Note that classes and subclasses are just more technical words for grouping, which we do ALL THE TIME. For example: your facebook friends, a part of them is your family, a fraction of them are your best friends. Or clothes - jeans, shirts,...; cars; computers... Almost every word can be thought as a group, that has its distinguishing feature. Our whole thinking bases on grouping similar thoughts together. Sadly it's where a lot of misunderstandings come from (racism, prejudicism...), and that's what makes individuals different - each one has its own way of grouping his/her thoughts. Grouping is also what leads to great discoveries - can you think outside of box, say that "no, it works actually likethese things, it shares a similarity with them, they belong in the same group..."

Systemise your existing memory to rapidly create a Memory Palace of 100, 1,000 or even more loci, using nested locations.

"Separate the subject from the structure"

In advance of memorising what you dont know, create a structure of something that you do know!

Rules:

1. Create a simple journey or palace in a building you already know. This is the base journey to give you the base loci.

(To create 10 loci per room is relatively easy to achieve and therefore so is 50 70 loci in an average sized house.)

2. Now select some pegs to place at each loci that, from your existing memory, will easily enable you to create a new imagined or known mini-location of at least 4 loci. This is a nested location.

3. Basically that is it! But bear in mind that in very little time you have just created a memory palace of at least 50 loci (one room) or at least 250 loci in on small house.

4. BUT, the beauty of this method is that it is actually pretty easy to create nested locations that have 10 loci and, with only a little more effort you can have many more nested loci, so that mini-locations become maxi-locations!

Examples:1. Base links can lead you to the set(s) or locations of a well-known (to you) TV programme, which is the nested location e.g. Star Trek, University Challenge, BBC Breakfast2. Base links can be paintings of an artist you know well. Then the nested locations come to life in his/her individual paintings.3. Base links can be to (say) 10 key scenes in your favourite movie. You then use the scenes as the nested locations to place your images.4. Base links can be a series of your favourite celebrities and the nested location is the place you immediately see in your minds eye when you think of that celebrity.5. Base links can be to levels of your favourite video games and the level is the nested location.6. Base links can be to your favourite golf courses or football grounds.

Benefits:1. Hooks onto existing knowledge and solves the problem of how to associate new knowledge to existing knowledge2. Systemises existing memory - that is probably not sequential into sequential3. Creates potentially huge palaces without needing to know or create multiple journeys and locations4. Means a large subject can be controlled in a small area.5. Great for adding additional level(s) for mind maps6. Can re- use other palaces you already have7. Can be very quick and much faster than creating new journies8. Uses brain linkages, not artificial ordering like, say, SEM3.

Why MMPS is different:

1. It is NOT using standard pegs that need an inherent sequential logic the initial base loci give you that.

2. It is NOT simply placing the base images of the new data to be memorised at your loci and then linking on the fly to the next level of new data to be memorised. This is often complex and mixes up structure and subject.

3. It is NOT just organising your existing journies

Problems solved:

Not enough journies Not enough loci Packing too many images into loci On the fly linking Much faster access to memorised data than SEM where have to translate more images

Advanced Extensions:

Nesting to more levels using loci linking (e.g Eiffel Tower to France to multiple places in France) or stories

Using colours and other attributes to multiply nested mini- locations

Create a mini story in new location add more loci or nested levels

Gavino's Massive Memory Palace System - Practical Examples

I have had a few messages asking for more practical examples of MMPs, so thought I would share some responses (apologies if I ramble!) and other information on this separate thread.

Anyway, to recap on some of the MMP key points:

1. I have found that I can easily imagine a location with around five loci (see below) and with a little help from a location that I already know (even if only slightly) I can get that up to 10 loci or more.

2. In terms of locations that I already know (or can easily picture) that could support 5 or 10 loci, there are literally thousands already in my memory. See later.

3. The question is, how can you utilise all of these mini-locations?

4. Answer: organise them using the MMP method, by having a base set of locations, whose only purpose is to provide a link (or hyperlink!) to these mini-locations.

Let us assume you have already created a 100 loci journey/palace, around your house. For ease of use, although this is not at all essential I am going to assume that you have 10 areas, each with 10 loci. So this might be front entrance/garden, dining room, kitchen, living room, back garden, 4 bedrooms and 1 bathroom.

The plan is to use these 100 loci purely to link to new mini locations, thus easily multiplying your 100 loci into 500 or 1,000 loci, depending on how carefully you want to select your mini locations.

Examples:

Front Garden has 10 loci. I quite like to have a theme for my mini-locations, but again, because you are linking to them from your base loci, this is not essential.

1. Pick 10 of your friends and link each one to a locus in your front garden.2. The mini-locations will be your friend's house or anywhere that you personally relate to that friend.3. I think if you have been to any friend's house, you can very easily and quickly work at least 10 loci out of it!4. Done! Suddenly you have 100 loci instead of 10.

Dining Room.

If you are popular, do another 10 friends! By the way, if you have 100 friends on Facebook, as some do, the location for each friend could be any memorable photo that they have posted and then suddenly you have your 500 - 1,000 location MMP straight away...

But still, let us select another method here. Do you have some movies you have watched numerous times (ideally). What you now need are 10 scenes from that movie. This is easy, because you should find that you can remember 10-20 scenes without any prompting from a movie you love (hint: think of the story from the perspective of what happens to each major character), but if you need help, then go to imdb and read a detailed synopsis. That will remind you enough for sure. Pick 10 scenes where you can imagine yourself walking around, interacting a little with what is there. Quickly pull together a 10 step journey in each location.

Final step is to simply put a link at each of the 10 base loci in your garden to that particular scene.

So, suddenly you have another 100 loci.

Kitchen:

10 locations here too. Where will you link? What about 10 areas/rooms at your school or workplace - or perhaps you need 4 areas from your school, 2 from your university, 2 from your first job and 2 from your second job, or whatever.

Create a 10 stage journey in each and link from your kitchen loci to each journey.

Living Room:

How about linking to your 10 favorite female celebrities and the most memorable scene you can think of involving that celebrity?

(Example: Sharon Stone: who can forget the leg crossing scene from Basic Instinct? With no refresh of the clip or movie, I might do this from memory for my 10 step mini-journey:

1. In front of SS2. On left of SS3. Behind SS4. On right of SS5. Hovering above SS6. Next to main inquisitor in the audience (overweight sweaty guy)7. Next to Michael Douglas8. Next to Douglas' cop friend9. At the door of the interrogation room10. In the corridor outside the interrogation room.

Easy. Can you picture it?)

I think you may be getting the hang of it, but finally for now, how about this? Do you by any chance have 100 Dominic System characters? Or 100 people from the beginning of a PAO system.

Now normally I don't recommend using DS characters as pegs, because I prefer to keep them for numbers, but if you need a big palace fast...

1. Link your 100 DS characters to the 100 loci in your house.

2. Now simply have a memorable location for each character. As it happens Sharon Stone is my 66, but why couldn't you do this for each of your DS characters?

Your DS characters should generally be memorable enough to get at least one decent 10-loci mini location from each, but even if not, take Adolf Hitler who is my 18. I have no great knowledge about him, but with very little effort I could imagine him next to a tank or delivering one of his speeches, perhaps from a balcony, or planning his strategy in a war room with his generals. No problem getting 10 loci there a la the Sharon Stone method above if need be. [Tip: Add a jeep to the tank and you are pretty much there!]

So, now your DS system of 100 characters, has quickly turned into (potentially) a memory palace with 1,000 loci!

The Memory Palace

I've been thinking a lot about theMemory Palace ideawhich Philip Linden mentioned in his SLCC presentation in New York (I'm waiting for a long train ride to sit and replay the tapes from the conferences). I believe he talked about this at SLCC but it might have been at SOP, and it was in the context about telling us that he came from a family of teachers, and that if he could get some "time off" from the "job of Second Life," teaching would be his choice occupation, and helping people learn. The Memory Palace idea involves remembering things by placing them literally around a palace.

One of the most impressive things about Philip is that he manifests as an open and curious person, big-hearted enough to listen to others, and not entranced with either his own cuteness or his own technical brilliance (which of course, may be a function of his personality that those who have to live with him more day-to-day see more often). People don't get to be great without being a pain in the ass somewhere along the line, but for PR or ego or sincere reasons, what Philip has learned how to do in life is to listen to other people and learn from them. That probably accounts for his ability to synthesize a lot of great ideas he sees around him and *do them*. For example, when I was telling him some arcane thing about my RL occupation, he looked blank, I explained a little bit more and said you know, X Y Z, and he said, "No, but I'm learning." You hardly *ever* encounter that attitude of "I'm learning, I'm listening" among the technerati.

I believe it was in that context of learning and preserving knowledge and using it in innovative ways that he mentioned this concept, which was one I had heard before, in different ways and in different settings.

Looking it up again,I found this good article at this link. I don't know if Philip and others had heard of the idea that the "Memory Palace" concept is an ancient idea, i.e. coding ideas/knowledge into architecture and 3-d artifacts.

That is, the ancient idea isn't just the Greek idea of the "science of memory" and placing things here and there, from whence came speech-making rhetorical devices like "In the first place," and "In the second place."

In Gurdjieff's "All and Everything," which is a kind of giant grab-bug of Georgy Ivanovich's "take-the-wisdom-of-the-East-and-the-knowledge-of-the-West-and-seek" notions, it's called the "Legomonism". Perhaps there is some neologism there taken from other languages, the idea of legibility, etc. which he took from Eastern ideas and Sufi teachings and such. And of course the idea of architecture and art containing hidden wisdom is found in a lot of esoteric traditions, in the cathedrals of Europe, etc.

These ideas are more dense that the modern idea, that is, these ancients believed that they were coding *right into* artifacts of various types -- paintings, sculptures, architecture, dance, theater -- various types of knowledge, including occult knowledge. It wasn't that this knowledge was contained like a text within a scroll within a bottle thrown on the sea. Rather, the knowledge was contained in the actual shape, light, interactivity, sensing of the object as the viewer contemplated it.

Interacting with coded objects such as these in the Memory Palace, you would obtain knowledge. Modernized, these concepts of how people learn by visualized cues, by interactive cues, not just by written text, have been put into modern museum exhibits, i.e. the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

I remember once visiting the World War II memorial in Latvia ofSalaspils, where 100,000 people were put to death by the Nazis. There were, of course, the giantist, hokey Soviet-heroic mammoth sculptures predictably depicting suffering and the defiance of the heroic human spirit -- a Communist Easter Island. There was the "A huge concrete wall in the shape of a long hollow cement beam marks the position of the former entrance, symbolizing the border between life and death." It was built in 1967, back when the Russians didn't get out much, except to take over nearby places like Latvia. The architecture seemed to be the worst of Soviet kitsch and sentimentality about World War II, which is a cult-like subject for Soviet society, and our tour group was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, trying to take in the multiple meanings.

As I paced around the large stone steps overgrown with grass on that damp, Soviet autumn day, a tour-guide fell into step beside me and began to explain something to me in Baltic-accented Russian. "The steps were deliberately made large, and deliberately spaced too far apart, and awkwardly, to evoke the feeling of suffering of the victims, who stumbled in the long line into the death camp."

The piercing chill I felt from her words has remained with me to this day. The already-flaking cheap Soviet cement and tackiness of the large statues fell away, and the artists' heartfelt meaning was conveyed in these simple, physical acts of stepping on cold stones deliberately set too far apart, not symetrically, overgrown with grass. This was a full-blown Memory Palace experience -- it is the kind of experience you may have taken away with you as a sense-memory, even if no guide explained it to you.

The Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC achieves these kinds of moments, well, with the sudden cramped three-leveled bunk beds in a dark room you pass through...or the Holocaust exhibit held at the Jewish Museum in New York, where the curators opted to place grey-white plaster casts of the victims of the gas chamber on the floors, so that you suddenly came upon a realistic shocking moment, but one not made too tabloid by actual realistic human flesh tones -- if anything the greyness of the plaster, people about to be reduced to ashes, had the more powerful visual impact.

In these Salaspils steps, there is the ancient concept of a deliberate "lawful inexactitude" ("deliberate imprecision") that will force you first to follow a pattern, then notice where the pattern interrupts, then within that interrupted pattern will be contained some ancient wisdom or insight, a kind of "Easter egg." Of course, the ancients put these types of codings into paintings and scultpure, and it is this kind of intriguing concept that makes the DaVinci Code so interesting to people hungry for knowledge.

Even if you want to dispense with ancient philosophies and such, there is no question that many people learn not by their "left-brain" left-to-right reading/decoding and comprehension of text, but by "right-brain" absorption of visual cues, as well as in-the-body sense experiences of touch, or emotional feeling. These are the "different intelligences" that some educators talk about.

What puzzles me is that theres so little use of this in SL, it's odd, given that it is a rich medium for creating such things. I wish I could build stuff to put these ideas to work -- the classes, the rote learning, the left-to-right struggles and time sink this would involve is not something I'd spend time on now, however, but I hope to inspire or commission others to do this.

There was, of course, the famous SLinstallation of what a Schizophrenic's world must be like. There'sSnakekiss Noir's Hiroshima exhibitwhich Hamlet has described. No doubt there are other exhibits like this scattered around SL. Surprisingly few, however.

It's funny for me to see something touted as ground-breaking like the _alwaysblack library on Game1 island in SL, which turns out to be just a basic 2-d coathanger for links to the Internet (they did put in some 3-D planetary displays but it has so much text spewing at you that you run screaming).

If you go to Traxx Hathor's build in Paradise (Hellsing King's boutiques) and various closed sims or Akim Phoenix's and CherryBomb Hare's Gorean island with the medieval village squares and slave quarters and tunnels and such, you can see how architecture leads the avatar around to have experiences of grand thought and feeling -- and dimunition.

(It's a sad commentary that authoritarians like these have the best and most looking architecture in SL but there you go.)

This is no-doubt a big part of their selling-point to the uninitiated Newb -- architecture that can teach instantly, by-passing most of the left-to-right text-based criticial faculties.

People often need to be told what to do.

The great Roman, Ottoman, Soviet empires all had giant building and scripting projects that often involved slave labour and huge vistas, tall spires and towers, immense walls, and vast avenues and prospects designed to dwarf the individual human figure and convey the ominpotence of the State.

Of course there are reasons why we visit these Roman and Soviet triumphant architectural monuments as ruins and museums and tourist programs, and not as inhabitants today : ) No doubt we will have to pass through this inevitable phase of authoritarian gigantism in SL as well.

Or another experience no doubt meant to be tactile is Forseti Svarog's mall in Garrison. Each time I pass through here on the way to one of my rentals, I wonder whether these are supposed to be nipples to milk dollars out of shoppers above..or?

Yet we don't need grandeur and pilasters to convey any kind of memory-palace experience in SL. There is always Boardman, of course. Even something like the shadows of the trees and how they fall in Boardman when you are on the swingset, invoking memories of childhood.

I also think Foolish Frost's build in Wakeley in "Free Tibet" which I commissioned which has Western nuclear symbols and Asian architecture and amazing steps and such also contains this kind of experience.

When it comes to SL history, despite our rich 3-D world, the various exhibits in Linden and oldbie sims of "SL History Wikis" actually *aren't* the thing I'm talking about since they are just 2-d notecards without any pictures even, or with only iconic "click on me" type pictures. Even the famed Ivory Tower of Prims is just too static and too technical.

There are great exhibits/builds in SL and yet...none of these are quite the Memory Palaces I am envisioning. I can see in my mind's eye how it could be, with interactive objects -- it has to be 3-D and streaming. You click and something opens up like a flower. A book opens or a musical instrument starts playing or rulers line up showing the relative sizes of things. Or a fairy flies up to you. That may sound too Disney. But...Something. Like an unfolding play. SL is supposed to merge the eye and the hand, eye-see-hand-do, that's the meaning of its famous hand-of-Fatima corporate symbol.

I attempted my own little "memory palace" type of lot for newbies, near a newbie tree, though I recently had to remove it from Ross, where it was a little respite from the malls, due to a neighbour blocking the parcel completely with his build (no doubt in retaliation for me putting him and his alts on ban, which was the natural recourse to him putting giant -- and I mean huge, sim-wide -- letters advertising his business all across the waterfront. Ah well, SL is fun like that).

Here's what I put, using all the stuff from the library I could:

1. Roll the dice, and the hover text and notecard says "Getting Started in SL". You instantly learn that this is going to be a crap shoot LOL.

2. Click on the parrot -- "how can I fly?"

3. Click on a box -- "how do I open this?"

4. A plywood prim has the basic steps to start building.

5. Inside the cabin is a bed, where you click for tips on where to find sex.

6. Click on a chair, it tells you that hard-won SL art of sitting your av down.

7. Outside overlooking the Linden falls are two chairs next to each other, with notecards that say "How to find a friend."

8. A pink flamingo contains the card "where's the gay community?"

9. A crossed sword has "where's elven stuff?"

10. The Ben Linden media player (which doesn't work to run videos in fact lol) is called "Why doesn't my game work?"

11. The firecrackers yield a card "What do I do about griefing?"

12. The picture on the wall explains how to take and keep screenshots well.

Well, you get the idea. As interactive as I can make it not being a scripter and builder, but just a newb dragging crap out of the library, too. It's called Qwik Start for Newbies: SL for Dummies. SL for the rest of us!

I've gone to the educational displays for newbs in Boardman, and the one the Lindens put up. They have a lot of focus on appearance, which is actually an easy one to learn because it is all labeled and you just slide it. Most people get that going on Orientation Island. Yet all the displays are on boards or with text, and there are no 3-D objects, or interactive types of experiences -- no visual cues. I think many people could learn the difficulties of Second Life if these types of more interactive visual displays could be arranged. That's one level of education -- about SL itself.

There's an ambitious project now by Iron Perth called LearnIsland, replete with planets made by Aimee Weber. I first heard it from someone normally enthusiastic about all things in SL, but who was somehow cautionary about this installation. Still, I was excited at the idea that someone might have finally made an interactive learning device for SL or RL learning endeavors that might actually use the functions of SL as we have it -- flyability, cut-and-paste-ability, replication, instant-rezzing and derezzing, etc. etc.

I spent an hour noodling around this island, clicking on stuff and reading, and came away exhausted and more than a little annoyed, with the way in which people who do "e-learning" seem to have such a heavy agenda. I suppose this is typical of neo-sciences. The system involves making you have to adapt all kinds of tools and gimmicks and scripted devices that they push on you as their vision of how you should learn. There isn't a single picture, a single workable and visual display and model. It isn't even that some of it costs money. Many people would go and buy a box that says on it: $500: Lean how to build" or "Learn PSP" if it sprang open with a moving, interactive, step-by-step go-at-your-own-pace self-learning tool. Instead, there is the sense that you will become very dependent in the new world of cyber learning on these people who will design the tools for it, and keep selling you endless upgrades, like the Microsoft model. You aren't free, and without freedom, it's hard to understand how you will learn.

Maybe this will be the wave of the future, and maybe it will turn out to be cool. I await convincing.

Still, it's like PowerPoint, and thedumbing down of American school-children's minds.Edward Tufts says PowerPoint"may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for speakers can be punishing to both content and audience." The standard PowerPoint deck, he says, "elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch."

This phenom of the elevation of form over function and content was one I constantly felt in the SLCC presentations with their zippy videos, pep talks, machinima videos, etc. I often felt like I waswith Tony Robbins at one of his motivational lectures, "setting my goals," "finding my balance" and using neat little devices to manage "my life plan". These e-learning thingies may merely be the latest contemporary version of the American cultural icno of the snake-oil seller or the motivational speaker.

Palacios de la Memoria.

Voy a explicaros un mtodo que consiste en unaversin muy ampliada de la sala romana.Para principiantes recomiendo visitar algn lugar que os guste y memorizarlo visualmente tomadnos el tiempo que os haga falta. Comencemos con los pasos;

Primeromemorizaremos algn lugarcon estancias llamativas como por ejemplo un museo.

Despus llenaremos es estancias conimgenes de engancheque queramos siguiendo unas normas de orden y distancias. Yo recomiendono poner mas de siete elementos por estanciadel palacio para manejar bien los objetos.

Los enganches debenseguir las reglas de la nemotecnia: Imaginacin, movimiento, choque, color, imagen, sonido, olor, sabor, tacto, placer, fuerte impresin, humor, sensualidad, sexualidad(si es una buena escusa para los hombres, pero no se excedan que les conozco) sinestesia( confusin de los sentidos), absurdo e historias cortas.

Cada sala puede tener unapuerta con un smboloque guarde relacin con alguna temtica.

Una vez que han memorizado varios palacios del mundo realpuedenproceder acrear uno imaginario,tan grande y complejo como quieran. Pero Ojo Mantengan un orden en su construccin y temtica y vayan siempre paso a paso. Llenando cada sala.

Y recuerden, visiten siempre que quieran sus palacios, inclusive puede ser un refugio para ustedes en pocas de estrs y les permite repasar la informacin contenida.

Un truco para multiplicar la capacidad de cada sala es asociar cada enganche con una lista de elementos. Ya que un palacio de la memoria mixto como ese se vuelve infinito a efectos prcticos.