5.0547 Memory, Media, &c. (1) (4/117)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 24 Dec 1991 13:17:44 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0547. Tuesday, 24 Dec 1991.

(1) Date: Fri, 20 Dec 91 18:31:16 PST (60 lines)
From: abosse@reed.edu (Arno Bosse)
Subject: Re: 5.0546 Memory, Media, Knowledge, and Thought

(2) Date: Fri, 20 Dec 91 20:40:21 CST (29 lines)
From: Charles Ess <DRU001D@SMSVMA>
Subject: Re: 5.0546 Memory, Media, Knowledge, and Thought

(3) Date: Fri, 20 Dec 91 20:49:21 CST (18 lines)
From: Charles Ess <DRU001D@SMSVMA>
Subject: Re: 5.0546 Memory, Media, Knowledge, and Thought

(4) Date: 20 Dec 91 22:38:00 EST (10 lines)
From: "DAVID STUEHLER" <stuehler@apollo.montclair.edu>
Subject: RE: 5.0546 Memory, Media, Knowledge, and Thought

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 91 18:31:16 PST
From: abosse@reed.edu (Arno Bosse)
Subject: Re: 5.0546 Memory, Media, Knowledge, and Thought (1/17)

> A better educated Humanist may know the standard term for that kind of
> memory which preserves things in themselves rather than as parts of
> larger patterns. I don't, so let me call it "surface-memory". My
> question is, then, to the degree that surface-memory becomes
> externalized, what happens to the relationship between human
> and machine? What happens to the way people think?
>
> Willard McCarty

It's a fascinating question... I'm not sure about how there ever could be a
kind of 'surface-memory' of the kind you describe Willard. Perhaps if you take
it in an Aristotelian sense of the kind described by him 'On Memory' in which
case the temporally unconnedted visual memory would be a case of
'recollection' rather than 'remembering.' The play on words in these two
instances, of (re)collect and (re)member is delightful, since it
illustrates the membering of the 'body' of the populated memory palace, rather
than the collection of a series of unrelated images. One could begin a
psychoanalytic reading at 'member' as well...

But to return from the digression, I think that if we propose the computer as
a new site of information (analogous to a 'world' of experiences) then even
a remembering of that information can only be as 'rich' as the links in which
it was orginally stored. This kind of remembering becomes little more like a
recollection.

Further, if we rely on the computer to provide the, lets call it the metaphoric
axis of the remembering (and we know that they excell at this beyond any human
capacity) we lose track of how this information should be organized in relation
to ist parts...and if the metonymic side is left to the computer too..well, we
all know the frustrations of hypercard stacks with pre-determined links. The
danger is that if the database (say, because of differeces in formats) had not
been designed to make a connection, then it cannot, and the connection is
somehow 'not there.'

Along these lines, I wonder if one of the kind of aphasias described by Jakobson
are not more prevalent amongst habitual computer information 'consumers' today.
(I mean in a more limted sense of course!) Why for instance, do I have far less
patience with a long email message (such as this one!) than I would with a
similarly 'long' message in writing, say in a magazine? Why is it, for
instance, that there is a tendency to reduce writing to short, incomplete
discourse, especially in news groups and radically so on forums such as IRC
(Internet Relay Chat)? Finally, have you noticed the tendency of people who
write on the 'net' frequently to supplement the paucity of their own brief,
postings, with 'smileys' to let the other person know how they 'really' feel?
These all seem to be symptoms of writing/interpretation that is short on the
metonymic, on the "larger patterns" of memory.

I have no doubt that the computer changes the way we think, but before I get
my nose tweaked :~) I think I'm going to stop, right here.

(Happy Holidays, people)

Arno Bosse
Reed College
abosse@reed.edu

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 91 20:40:21 CST
From: Charles Ess <DRU001D@SMSVMA>
Subject: Re: 5.0546 Memory, Media, Knowledge, and Thought (1/17)

As usual, Willard raises for us the _interesting_ questions....I look
forward to others' responses.
Let me suggest that at least one direction of Willard's question --
what happens to the way people think as they use the computer as a
memory storage device -- has been problematicized within the hypermedia
community using such terms as "cognitive prostheses," "knowledge
extensions," etc. This work, so far as I'm aware of it, however,
is focused not only on the impact of relying on machine memory -- but
more precisely on the impacts of utilizing the computer as mimicking
the mind in its development of often complex, associative "webs" of
conceptual relationships. If this is what people are interested in,
perhaps some of the other attendees of Hypertext '91 would care to
make more precise comments?

So far as my own experience with hypermedia goes -- I find that it
does for my conceptualization of relationships very much what using
the wordprocessor as an editor and using a database as an information
storage device do: namely, remind, reinforce, and extend these cognitive
developments in my own mind -- in part as they provide an editable
"mirror" of the mind -- one which, unlike the evanescent slipstreams
of thought, can be stored, retrieved, and edited in light of new
insight and information.

Charles Ess
Drury College
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------24----
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 91 20:49:21 CST
From: Charles Ess <DRU001D@SMSVMA>
Subject: Re: 5.0546 Memory, Media, Knowledge, and Thought (1/17)

A query to couple to Willard's: I've become interested in applying
a Habermasian (?) notion of a discourse ethic to the environment
established in a networked/hypermedia computing facility. There is
already some literature (first and foremost, by the venerable
George Landow from Brown) which approaches hypermedia from the
standpoint of Post-structuralism (so as to focus on democritizing
by way of decentering and fragmentation, etc.) Is anyone aware of
similar work which takes up Critical Theory (in the sense of the
Frankfurt School) as its theoretical beginning point?

Thanks in advance,

Charles Ess
Drury College
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------17----
Date: 20 Dec 91 22:38:00 EST
From: "DAVID STUEHLER" <stuehler@apollo.montclair.edu>
Subject: RE: 5.0546 Memory, Media, Knowledge, and Thought (1/17)

There is no evidence that any knowledge is stored in the mind as
"surface knowledge" but some that it is stored as patterns or
relationships--integrated into some larger structure.

Dave Stuehler