If you are going to read widely but often read books only once; if you going to tackle the ever-expanding universe of ideas by skimming and glancing as well as reading deeply; then you are going to rely on the semantic-memory version of gisting. By which I mean, you’ll absorb the gist of what you read but rarely retain the specifics. Later, if you want to mull over a detail, you have to be able to refind a book, a passage, a quote, an article, a concept.
Clive Thompson on transactive memory and how to use the internet to make us smarter rather than dumber.
This method is also the essence of this excellent, if deceptively titled, piece on how to talk about books you haven’t read.
(via explore-blog)