An interesting thing that is overlooked by us in out enthusiasm to gain and eidetic memory (so called photographic memory).

1.An eidetic memory can interfer with our day to day reality... are we just looking at our memory or are we experiening reality. Our internal processor protect us in this way to ensure that we recognises a memory from reality. It pointless remembering how a street looked in your memory if today they dug a ditch and put warning signs up telling you the landscape has changed. If you have an accute eidetic memory then you could find the current reality not matching, but how would you tell?

2. If we rely on an eidetic memory for information you would delay gaining knowledge of it till later, you'd then have to read it when you want the information... That is not great if you have to search your memory for the right page with the answer in a test. Eg you got 9 minutes on a test and it takes you 30 to find the information in a book... when you have found the right book that is.

My conclusion, for now, is that the reason we don't rely on an eidetic memory is simply because our mind has sorted out the information to make it useful to us on an ongoing basis. For the most part we do not need to parrot back information that is written in text verbatim. In fact if we did this during a test we'd be accused of cheating. Also being able to parrot back information does not enhance our knowledge of a subject. Only by putting it into our own words does it have meaning to us. Once we modified it in this way, the eidetic memory of something we've read or experienced is also modified.

It seems to me we all have an eidetic memory, we just keep modifying it when we use it. Actually if you played the dictionary game you have to demonstrate some form of eidetic memory (photographic memory) in picking the right location of a word etc. Since we train our mind to gain more information out of books rather than just what they page looks like we bypass eidetic memory and go straight for the information.

My conclusion ... for now, still checking.

Alex