Memories, Of Past and Future
We store almost
piece of information on our smartphone. And back that data up on the cloud. But
haven’t people been doing that for centuries via stone tablets, books and Post-it
notes? To which Sophie
McBain responds, there are fundamental differences between the two:
“In the past this required deliberate
effort, such as sitting down to write a diary, or filing away a letter, or
posing for a portrait, today this process can be effortless, even
unintentional.”
And:
“One is a passive receptacle, the other
is active. A notebook won’t reorganise the information you give it or ping you
an alert; its layout and functions won’t change overnight; its contents aren’t
part-owned by the stationery firm that made it.”
Another point
McBain makes is indeed true:
“We’re all tourists exploring the world
from behind a camera, too distracted by our digital memories to inhabit our
analogue lives fully…Are we less attentive to our experiences because we know
that computers will record them for us?”
On the plus side
though:
“We often mistakenly convert our
imaginings into memories – scientists call the process “imagination inflation”.
This puts biological memories at odds with digital ones.”
Ok, all that’s
about memories of the past. What about memories of the future? Huh? Let Clive Thompson explain
what that means:
“There’s one big area where our digital
recall falls short: prospective memory …our ability to remember to remember
something—like stopping to grab the dry cleaning on the way home.”
But aren’t
reminders on your phone already doing that? Ah, but:
“What we also need is to be reminded where to do things—a nudge that occurs
not just in time but in space.”
The “where” part
of the reminder is still in primitive state:
“These systems may work, but they’re
crude, because GPS isn’t very accurate.”
But fear not:
“The next generation needs to be much
more granular, using tech like near-field communications, Bluetooth, and RFID.”
And inevitably
the phase after that:
“The next phase is to have APIs that let
other services—and aware objects—talk to your map: Your calendar could
automatically insert reminders in the right place.”
The Internet
enabled era is just getting started.
This statement quoted by you “We’re all tourists exploring the world from behind a camera, too distracted by our digital memories to inhabit our analogue lives fully…Are we less attentive to our experiences because we know that computers will record them for us?” is the truth the Zen (and other Eastern Spiritual) masters have been harping on all the time. Our information age has indeed reduced human beings to having an atrociously poor attention span on the one side, and, the ability to discard the minimum required feeling - a human way to interact with other people and living beings. The way people ignore other people right in their front while being given to rude interruptions towards and full absorption into the mobile is just a tip-or-the-iceberg example. The great physicists of the past, including the ultimate Einstein, achieved what the did because they had curiosity to know the truth as it is and because they had the ability for wonderment about Nature. We have much diminished capability of these qualities, but it is not our fault of course. We build our own social cocoon and live (shall I say survive instead of live)in it, who is from outside to help us?
ReplyDeleteAs to memory, (I am digressing) the human organization for memory is a grand mystery of Nature. Unlike any digital system today, there is no specific memory place in the human brain. No terabyte module residing inside us! Strangely no brain part removed is able to take away the human memory, but one jolt (like a thud due to an accident) can finish off the whole memory. Also the human brain does a memory unification process which is mystifying the greatest researchers today. We connect up visual, audio, dynamism (etc.)in a way that no computer can do in that fashion in the same fashion. For example, how we remember a person has the components of the person's voice, facial features, body size, traits, all kinds of normalcy and abnormalities and also specific deviations and weirdness too! And yet, no researcher is able to find out where and how the unification of data is taking place.
On the whole, instead becoming an ever-increasing admirer of modern technologies, at one level I am getting both wary and weary of them! After more than a century of its writing Wordsworth's lament of "Little we see in nature that is ours..." is making excellent sense to me. We seem to "know" a lot about Nature intellectually and are hell-bent on conquering it. In the process we seem to be losing our ability to "live" as a child of our mother Nature, enjoying the loveliness She has placed around us. Trees and plants above and mud below are soothing, whereas the concrete jungle that we live in brings about, believe it or not, a lack of ease. Like all children lose their innocence when the grow up, mankind might possibly have lost the child-like quality that our primates might have had. Fortunately the wise people tell us not to worry. We can find peace because that is our real nature. If that is true, no technology or life style can take it away. We can be ourselves - time and surroundings are just outside details.