The New York Times, in a book review of Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, makes some interesting points related to information security and metaphysics.

…memory is intricately tied to identity; we are a product of our own experiences. What we perceive is shaped by what we have perceived before; what we learn is bootstrapped on past learning. Amnesia seems to many so horrifying because it robs us of our own autobiography, and thus, it seems, ourselves. If on no other ground, most Americans are joined in our shared desire to improve the curious, elusive faculty we call “memory.”

[…]

This seeming sleight of hand — memorize X in order to remember Y — takes advantage of a simple fact of human cognition: we naturally remember visual images.