From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow:

All forms of mental flow depend on memory, either directly or indirectly. (121)… As far back as there are records of human intelligence, the most prized mental gift has been a well-cultivated memory…. Only in the past century, as written records have become less expensive and more easily available, has the importance or remembering dramatically declined. Nowadays a good memory is considered useless except for perofmring on some game show or for playing Trivila Pursuit.

But for a person who has nothing to remember, life can become severely impoverished. This possibility was completely overlooked by educational reformers early in this century, who, armed with research results, proved that 'rote learning' was not an efficient way to store and acquire information. As a result of their efforts, rote learning was phased out of the schools. The reformers would have had justification, if the point of remembering was simply to solve practical problems. But if control of consciousness is judged to be at least as important as the ability to get things done, then learning complex patterns of information by heart is by no means a waste of effort. A mind with some stable content to it is much richer than one without. It is a mistake to assume that creativity and rote learning are incompatible. (123)