“Digital memory is ubiquitous yet unimaginably fragile, limitless in scope yet inherently unstable.”
“Question changed from What can we afford to save? to What can we afford to lose?”
“Data is not knowledge, and data storage is not memory.”
“Temporal depth perception” allows us to travel in tie back and forward, increasing our imaginative capacities and conjectural thinking.”
“Access of memory over time requires: self-awareness, symbolic thought, and language”
“Culture is the collective wit by which we live.”
History started when Adam and Eve chose knowledge over reverence: “The moral of the story is that in Paradise, there is no curiosity.”
Proliferation of Sumerian cuneiform tablets first instance of Big Data management, logistical challenge
Memory the ultimate life-hack: DNA doesn’t keep what our parents knew; we have to learn from scratch using “knowledge objects” – objects as evidence principle
“We often blame the feeling of alienation from Nature on our technologies. But that feeling of separation existed well before the invention of computers, cars, and air-conditioning. Assigning blame to our tools and technologies is a by-product of secularization. Why we have that feeling is “explained” in Genesis as part of the human condition. But having rejected that explanation, we simply turn to technology as the culprit.”
“Culture is the set of given, ready-made elements that make up a living past, and that living past determines the basic parameters of lives and the choices available to us over time. It provides the baseline context of order and meaning in our private lives by directing our attention to some things and steering us away from others.”
“In periods of great instability, the past becomes more useful as we increasingly tap into the strategic reserve of humanity’s knowledge. Yet it is at moments like this when the past is most easily lost.”
Spatial context key to memory retrieval (Alzheimer’s patients, mnemonics)
“Until the present age, managing physical objects was the only way we managed knowledge. The order of knowledge mirrored the order of things. In digital archives, there are no objects, only bits. They are stored randomly and assembled on the fly when they are called up on the screen.”
“Distributing knowledge over generations and across continents is the closest we will ever come to creating a natural resource that cannot be exhausted and whose value actually increases with use.”
Montaigne turned to library later in life: “The land of memory where dead people talk.”
1500s excavation of classic literature and the proliferation of printing press – self-documenting
Jefferson sold Congress book collection at face value ($23,950) which was approved along party lines; paid off creditors with 8K to spare
Jefferson obsessed with books and recovery of past to demonstrate America’s greatness; sought comprehensive and coherent collection of knowledge about and useful to America, not merely catering to personal interests
Collectors the “first line of defense against the physical loss of our cultural legacy”
“In exchange for the eminent powers over Nature we gained with the new science, we lost more than a god who knows our name and cares about our individual fate. We lost anyone to hold accountable for the ills of the world. We cannot blame our creator for the existence of evil. … Materialism robs us of a supernatural source of knowledge. This means that the cumulative knowledge and know-how of humanity, the collective memory that constitutes the entire repertoire of knowledge we need to understand ourselves and the world, is dependent on our careful stewardship.”
“Nature is the ultimate archives, the most complete set of records about the past, the Universal Library itself. And science becomes the ultimate library card, granting unlimited access to the curious.”
“The forensic imagination demanded better instruments of investigation and lots of them. That desire to read Nature’s archives drove—and still drives the invention of new technologies to observe, measure, record, play back, analyze, compare, and synthesize information.”
Memory formation and retrieval = curation — selection, acquisition, categorization, storage, and preparation for retrieval on demand
Interesting idea of short-term memory like overnight parking lot, which is sorted and processed during sleep before being discarded or filed long-term—sleep as algorithm. What is useful gets converted to long-term and abstracted from native context for future reuse in other contexts
Memory isn’t read-only, it’s save-as
Cuneiform opposite of our memory because didn’t change; digital memory more like our biological memories
“Memory records the world as so. Imagination transposes it into the key of as if, transforming experience into speculation.”
Soviet joke that in their land the future is certain, it is the past that is always changing
Cultivating imagination: don’t cut back on kids’ unstructured playtime and music & arts ed, don’t privatize culture to all but well-off adults
“In the present age, we are told that knowledge is cumulative, expert knowledge abounds, and what counts is to add something useful to the sum of useful knowledge. It is hard to argue for the cultivation of the aesthetic imagination by saying that it is useful because it makes us better friends, mates, parents, citizens, workers. But it does precisely these things because it enhances our emotional intelligence. The aesthetic and moral imagination are intrinsic to the human condition. Without them we are less than human.”
“How do we master memory in the digital age of abundance? It will start with retooling literacy for the digital age and updating public policies to ensure investment in long-term institutions capable of securing memory into the future.”
Digital autonomy/literacy: filtering data for value, creating times of deep absorption, and setting our machines to be on call when we need them but not to intrude on our privacy
Commercial companies have no responsibilities to future generations, can disappear; preserving commercially owned digital content = handoff of “significant knowledge assets” to public institution
Market capitalism not good for long-term investment in public good. Jefferson and Founders envisioned the organization of access to knowledge to be a public utility wholly owned by the people for the purpose of self-government; without handoff from private to public nonprofit stewards, “it will be hard to avoid collective amnesia in the digital age.”
“Earbudding” restores autonomy in a noisy environment
“Digital memory will outsource more tasks to machines that outperform us and make room in our “brain attics” for cultivation of our emotional and imaginative powers”
Need secure, reliable digital infrastructure, like Internet Archive; without it will have black holes of memory
Lincoln: “I know of nothing so pleasant to the mind, as the discovery of anything which is at once new and valuable.” [– nothing which so lightens and sweetens toil, as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery.”]
“The Internet is extremely useful. At the same time it encourages the pursuit of curiosity for its own sake and democratizes it.”
“The realm of emotional intelligence, empathy, and imagination—all necessary for judgment in the context of incomplete information or conflicting aims—is beyond the reach of our machines. … As we teach our children how to use digital machines, we need simultaneously to cultivate their capacity for empathy and emotional intelligence by integrating the arts—the making of beautiful things and the telling of stories—into the new curriculum for digital literacy. Our machines will not grow a moral imagination anytime soon.”