MemeMachineGo!

Currently reading Tony Buzan's Use Both Sides of Your Brain.

Failure to review is equally as bad for general memory. If each new piece of information is neglected, it will not remain at a conscious level, and will not be available to form new memory connections. As memory is a process which is based on linking and association, the fewer items there are in the recall store, the less the possibility for new items to be registered and connected.

On the opposite side of this coin, the advantage for the person whe does review are enormous. The more he maintains his current body of knowledge, the more he will be able to absorb and handle. When he studies, the expanding amount of knowledge at his command will enable him to digest new knowledge far more easily, each new piece of information being absorbed in the context of his existing store of relevant information. The process is much like that of the traditional snowball rolling, where the snowball gets rapidly bigger the more it rolls and eventually continues rolling under its own momentum.

I found his portrayal of forgetting as a tragedy, for the lost opportunity going forward to make new links and associations to the forgotten knowledge striking. And it occurs to me, that all of this is highly applicable to the Web, and what bloggers, and Google, and many others are doing. We're rolling a snowball of meaningful associations. Where's it going to go when it picks up speed?