Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 06:56:50 -0400
Mr. Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net
The Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111 2496
| Subject: | Educating KM Engineers and Customers |
Rod,
Too well I know the frustrations and loss of time when trying to bring back to memory old, worked-out thoughts as a point of departure for further thinking or writing.
Funny thing happened after I sent off to you the previous reply:
Not all that long ago I read an argument in favor of "natural" rememberring - how ideas gel and develop within our subconscious minds while on the surface we attend to other matters. I thought, hey, that would be interesting, to compare that kind of subconscious fruition with the SDS way of accurate retrieval of the original thought inputs and the fruits from that process.
The irony is that for the life of me I can't remember what I did with the article!
Psychologist Michael Gazzaniga (in his book "The Mind's Past") reminds us of our false memories ("Some of my best meories are false," he quips). I would guess that with an ageing population, false memories will be more and more of a problem in decison-making processes, notably in the democratic, public arena. Kind of argues in favor of your system, not only for managers in formal organizations, but also for conscientious citizens in a complexing society.
Did you ever do, or had a chance to do, public demonstrations?
Afterthought: Gazzaniga says that all we remember is the gist of things. My off-the-cuff sense of things is that we may be better off not to be made to remember strictly factual data and instead make it a habit of looking them up. It is better not to know than to impulsively rely on false memories. It is the "gist of things" that would make us do the looking for them.
Sincerely,
Henry
Henry van Eyken
vaneyken@sympatico.ca