I once went through a painful, protracted breakup, conducted almost entirely over this LG phone. It wasn't a bad phone, but to this day, even a picture of it is like a punch to the gut - its Major-thirds ringtone, the wallpaper mocking my heartache with its cheery blue sky. I feel a little nauseous even describing it (my description may just be nauseating, in fairness).
In 2001, I spoke to my father on this Kyocera smartphone from 8th Avenue, having run up the block from work just in time to see the first tower fall. I don't have to go into all the emotional baggage which that implies.
Now, in my current phase, I probably don't have enough perspective to characterize what of me is reflected in my current phone, but I think that in a while, I'll have an idea.
Since the time began that we were never to be found without our mobile phones (or whichever portable devices, for that matter), I feel that somehow all of the memories of the current chapter of my life are being constantly averaged out and inextricably linked to the phone that I'm using.
Do you have any similar experiences to share? Do you think that linking my identity to my gadgets entails a sort of anthropomorphism? What do you think Proust would have to say about all this? (I've never read Proust, so I'm honestly asking.) Other insightful references to prior discussions or great thinkers would be helpful as well.
Update: Michael Leddy at orange crate art has been mining his Proust and has turned up an incredibly relevant passage to the discussion:
...a thing which we have looked at long ago, if we see it again, brings back to us, along with our original gaze, all the images which that gaze contained. This is because things -- a book in its red binding, like the rest -- at the moment we notice them, turn within us into something immaterial, akin to all the preoccupations or sensations we have at that particular time, and mingle indissolubly with them.
-Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
New research suggests that doctored photos can easily influence a viewer's memory of the events depicted.
For example, those participants shown the doctored photograph of the protest in Rome (top right), in which figures placed in the foreground give the impression of violence, rated the event as being significantly more violent and negative than it actually was. In their comments, they also provided false details, such as conflicts, damages, injuries and casualties that did not appear in the photos and were not documented at the event.
(via conscientious)
From an article on human memory that includes profiles of a woman who remembers everything she's done in her life since age 11 and a man who remembers almost nothing after 1960:
The metaphors we most often use to describe memory -- the photograph, the tape recorder, the mirror, the hard drive -- all suggest mechanical accuracy, as if the mind were some sort of meticulous transcriber of our experiences. And for a long time it was a commonly held view that our brains function as perfect recorders-that a lifetime of memories are socked away somewhere in the cerebral attic, and if they can't be found it isn't because they've disappeared, but only because we've lost access to them.
That's not the case, of course. A better metaphor for human memory might be that of an almost-saturated sponge trying to sop up spilled water on a counter. The sponge gets some of the water up but also loses some of its already-captured liquid and you just sort of smear the watery mess all over until the counter is completely wet but appears less waterlogged than it was. At least, that's how *my* memory works.
Forgetting May Be Part of the Process of Remembering. "A lightning memory, in short, is not so much a matter of capacity as it is of ruthless pruning." I pointed to some similar studies in my better living through self-deception post from a couple of weeks ago.
The Remembering Site is a place to create and share personal histories. The questions the site asks when recording your rememberances are quite extensive (here's a sample biography/history)...what a great way to record the details of your life for your family and loved ones.
From an article on mnemonics in the NY Times Magazine:
This might well be called the year of memory. Already, I'm able to click on the icon that marks the Find function on my little pocket Treo. Can't think of a friend's last name? I enter "Myrna," and in a second the screen invites me to choose Davis, Greenberg or Lewis. Can't remember the name of a book by Jonathan Spence? This time, it's Google to the rescue: three clicks gives the answer: "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci." And that's just the start.
Apple has just released Tiger, its latest operating system, which includes Spotlight. Just as Google searches the World Wide Web, this new feature uses a word or phrase to find a document inside your computer. Microsoft is at work on a new operating system, Longhorn, with similar capability. Such powerful assists to memory raise a question never before conceivable: Why struggle to remember anything?
I've been increasingly aware of this phenomenon with my own memory. Emails are forgotten seconds after they're read; Mail.app will keep track of those. If I'm having lunch with a friend and they bring up something I've posted to kottke.org recently, it often takes me several seconds to remember posting it...my weblog (my outboard brain) is where I put things that I want to "remember". I've never been able to remember people's names worth a damn, but until recently, I knew hundreds of URLs. Now my newsreader keeps track of those for me. I know 3 phone numbers by heart: mine, Meg's, and that of my childhood home (where my dad still resides); the rest are in my cell phone. Birthdays and special occasions are in iCal...I know a few friends' birthdays and when the 4th of July is, but that's about it. And Google remembers everything else.
I'm sure with all that storage space in my brain freed up for other things, I'm able to do so much more with my limited mental faculties. If only I could remember...
Why do we forget our childhood?. Because we don't know the language at such a young age to form memories.
As one gets smarter, how you use your memory changes. "Verbatim memory is often a property of being a novice. As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of the costs they pay is lower memory accuracy for individual differences."
