We live in a point and click culture. We surf the Internet and we are surrounded by millions of bobbing bits of random information - accessible by a mere tap of the finger.

But do we remember the information we access? Or have our memories become flaccid? How do our memories compare to those of our ancestors who lived a thousand years ago?

Watch your typical teenager at work:

Chad is driving his X-box while simultaneously downloading music onto his ipod. He is also surfing the Internet for information, which he needs in order to complete his homework assignment. In the midst of all this activity, he manages to sneak in text messages to his girlfriend on his cell phone.

Impressive? Certainly. This is multi-tasking at warp speed. But what about Chad's memory? Well, compared to the memories of the citizens of Ancient Greece and Rome, Chad's memory is feeble. Your ancient Greek or Roman would sneer at his capacity for recollection.

Simplicius was able to recite Virgil backwards. Seneca the Elder, who was born in 54 BC, could hear a list of two thousand names and then repeat them in exact order. Before the printing press people had to remember everything. Students listened to their teachers and would pass on knowledge gained by word of mouth. Their memories were muscular.

In contrast, modern man is increasingly incapable of internalising knowledge. Our memories are shallow. We surf the Internet obsessively, but forget what we've read almost as soon as we've read it. Information in newspapers and TV is fed to us bite-sized for easy consumption. We receive enormous doses of information every day. But it is in one ear and out the other. We are experts at skimming. We are failures at remembering. The Internet, the TV, the photo-copier are props we rely on as our memories continue to weaken. We are becoming adept multi-taskers but our growing multi-tasking ability is a facile skill, allowing us to skim the waves of chaos, not swim through them.

We are all born with natural memory but instead of strengthening that memory throughout our lives - training it the way you would your body in a gym - we allow it to become flabby.

It is a path we walk at our peril. Without a highly robust memory, we lack the ability to get a handle on the turbulent universe we live in. Without a flexible memory, we cannot draw connections between widely differing concepts...because we are unable to even recall those concepts. A weak memory precludes those leaps of brilliance, when the brain matches one concept with another concept that lies completely outside its orbit, thereby creating that wonderful cognitive dissonance, which is at the heart of many inspired creative endeavours.

Memory was all-important to the Ancient Greeks and they came up with a system to help them strengthen their powers of recollection. Commonly known as The Art of Memory, it is a mnemonic technique, which assists the practitioner in strengthening his memory skills to almost unimaginable levels. Later, during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Art of Memory turned into an occult art when it became a tool in the hands of alchemists and Gnostics.

A memory artist is capable of building artificial memory inside his brain, which enables him to handle infinitely bigger chunks of knowledge than he'd normally be able to absorb. To use a twenty-first century metaphor: the memory artist's mind becomes computerized, adapting itself to processing vast quantities of information.

How did memory artists do it? By building theatres or palaces of memory - vast, imaginary buildings - stored within their mind. Inside these buildings would be carefully conceived memory images - some fantastically beautiful, others horrendous - all of them striking. These images -- or icons -- functioned as symbols linked to specific chunks of information.

The idea was that the practitioner would walk through the building in his imagination, locating the various images in strict order. As he focuses on each image in turn, he then recovers the information that is associated with each specific icon. In other words - to use computer terminology once more - he would be walking through coded space. It is like opening the desktop on your PC and clicking on an icon, thereby retrieving the info attached to the icon. But instead of pointing and clicking a mouse, someone practising the Art of Memory would be walking through imaginary rooms created inside his own mind. And while moving from room to room, he will be accessing images and their stored information in order.

At first the Art was merely an aid to memory. But during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Art changed when it fell into the hands of men who were interested in obtaining divine powers.

Alchemists such as Giordano Bruno, Ramon Lull and Giullo Camillo, built memory theatres that were appallingly complex. They were supposed to hold information about every aspect of the universe - the entire history of human civilization. The theatre represented the cosmos, and the images inside it, knowledge of the cosmos. These buildings were really vast information systems constructed according to techniques of numerology and cryptology infused with magic - a kind of mystical mathematics.

The highest aspiration of these memory artists was gnosis - divine knowledge and universal memory. They believed they could produce a kind of information system capturing all the knowledge in the universe...but an information system located in the mind alone: wetware, not hardware. Their ultimate goal was to tap into this mind system and access all universal knowledge at once in a single gigantic blast of data. At this instant of total knowledge, they believed they would experience enlightenment and become one with cosmic consciousness.

Whether any of these men achieved the goal of universal knowledge is questionable but it was the journey as much as the destination that attracted them. Simply constructing the palaces and embedding them into their memories was a stupendous feat. By trying to wrap his mind around one of these information systems, the magician's mind was stretched and strained - propelled into a divine change of state. This journey of the memory would ultimately lead to transformation: every alchemist's dream. If successful, the practitioner would be endowed with supernatural powers and knowledge of the great secrets of the universe.

Memory artists in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were alchemists. They were information addicts and their use of occult practises brought them in direct conflict with the Church. To be a practising alchemist could be very dangerous. Giordano Bruno ended up burning at the stake.

But that these were a breed of exceptional men is without question. Bruno's Shadows is a work of great brilliance. Lull's information system was a massively intricate system of wheels within wheels and his use of symbolic logic influenced Leibnitz's development of calculus. The Ars Magna was translated by a German philosopher into the programming language COBOL. There are those who believe that Lull's memory system is the occult origin of the modern computer.

The Art of Memory is a highly esoteric topic. For those interested in an in-depth discussion of the fascinating but rigorous world of the memory artist, I strongly recommend Dame Frances Yates's seminal work on the subject.