(Also, apologies for not having page numbers, my kindle version only has locations)
"If we remembered every single detail of everything, we wouldn't be able to make sense of anything." (Thompson)
How can this be? I'm reading this as "if we have all the information possible, we wouldn't know how to use it." This seems absurd, because I think that with more information, the more sense you can make. Perhaps this quote is assuming that you have a normal brain until you're 25, and one morning you wake up with every memory from the womb to the present moment. Sure, that would be pretty overwhelming. But if our brains functioned like machines from the very beginning, never forgetting a single piece of data, I think we could make sense of everything. So...I don't buy this.
"The real power of digital memories will be to trigger our human ones." (Thompson)
Lastly, I'd like to touch on the concept of ambient awareness. This was really cool to see fleshed out, because it's a phenomenon that we all experience. It made me realize that I am less ambiently aware than all of my classmates, because I don't social network. However, I still experience some amount of this awareness through things like email and texting (sorry Alex, gotta use you as an example). For the first month of the semester, Alex was a static character in my classroom fixture. We'd discuss readings when prompted by Doug and participate in large group discussions, but once class was over, the character(s) disappear, at least for me. One day Alex and I decided to exchange numbers, in an effort to kick each other's ass when motivation levels got low and one of us contemplated not going to class. As soon as she was entered into my phone, she became a fixture in my mind instead of just the classroom. Each Tuesday and Thursday morning, there's some minor degree of acknowledgement that both Alex and I might be toying with the idea of not coming to class, and this awareness prompts a motivational text message. Another example is with Ian, who I've known in previous classes, but never interacted with as a human, only as a student (you guys all know they aren't the same thing. Nobody says shit like "it struck me as particularly interesting that bleh bleh bleh and the implications are fairly extensive in terms of theoretical perspectives" in conversation, and if you do, nobody enjoys talking to you.) Ian and I exchanged numbers this semester also, and through our occasional texts an image of his life started to emerge for me. Whether this image is accurate or not is irrelevant, it's the fact that the technological action of inserting a number into a phone suddenly makes a person more tangible. Personally, I find this equal parts spooky and cool, and I can't help but wonder what other awarenesses I experience. Overall, Thompson gave me a ton to think about, and helped me start my CPE, so right the fuck on. 
"'if we have all the information possible, we wouldn't know how to use it.' This seems absurd, because I think that with more information, the more sense you can make." I see what you mean by this and I think that you have a point. I also think, however, that there is a limit in the amount of information we can take. Have you ever experienced a time where someone/several people gave you so much information that you were overwhelmed with either 1) where to begin with it or 2) you weren't sure if it was important to what you were doing or not? In these situations, having so much information can actually hinder progress. I think it's a complete possibility to have too much information. I also think if we were to have the answers to everything, then we wouldn't be able to organize the information into a manageable thing. Not to mention, the more information you have, the more questions are raised. So, not only would you have too much information that you would know what to do with, but you would never be satisfied with the answers being that, likely, they would just continue to raise more and more questions.
ReplyDeleteAdam,
ReplyDeleteI can't tell what makes this post more hilariously interesting-- your anti-government response followed by, "Holy shit I can't believe I typed such a batshit crazy sentence;" your definition of students: "Nobody says shit like "it struck me as particularly interesting that bleh bleh bleh and the implications are fairly extensive in terms of theoretical perspectives" in conversation, and if you do, nobody enjoys talking to you;" or your somewhat-personal and interesting narrative of interactions with our fellow WRIT 371 students.
But on the topic of memory, I felt when Thomas said, "If we remembered every single detail of everything, we wouldn't be able to make sense of anything," he was writing within a context of recognizing the fallibility of the human mind. Certainly, if our brains functioned like powerful supercomputers we could make sense of potentially limitless knowledge. But, our minds are currently preoccupied with biological and physiological processes, interaction, language, homeostasis, and so forth. The intense multi-tasking our minds perform takes space and time from memory, and thus if we recalled every bit of information, I think we would feel pretty overwhelmed beyond cognition. But, like Thomas wrote when discussing the chess-playing robot/human teams, one afforded the computing power and the other afforded the intuition. So yeah, it'd be sweet to have a cyborg-processing mind, but as it so happens, I think it's sweet that we can design machines capable of performing tasks our minds are too active and busy to do.
Lastly, on valuing memory, I think that constructions of the past are changing as postmodernism becomes a valid epistemology. That is, perhaps the way we construct something is more important than the actual construction of it, like history for example. Also, we live in the information age, and there is increasingly and increasingly more information to remember, so we turn to devices to retain the bulk of it. With technology, I don't think we are forgetting more but rather are faced with more to remember. Interesting to me is the question of how we *decide* what to remember, versus what to commit to smartphone memory or other forms of the "digital mind." Do we value information differently when we know we can "save" it for future access? Perks my interest.
Thanks for writing,
Anjeli