My concern has to do with the reliability of these e-memories… Could this record be hacked, real memories and events replaced with false? How can the quality of these e-memories be guarenteed?

I wonder about the impedance mismatch (to use an electronics metaphor) between these memories and the biologic: the former is like the laid-down tape that I mistakenly thought accurate, the latter is actually more like the recreation of heavily tokenised data from its tokens—not playing a tape, but rather re-creating a piece of music from notes on paper, and with similarly variable results.

The only people for whom this might not be a problem would be the eidetic—how does that work, anyway?—and many of them are retarded or autistic enough that though they have access to a lot of data, they don’t have much access to _meaning_….

I love that the end of the intro text is “Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.”

Looking forward to the story

There are a LOT of things we are better off NOT remembering.

“There are a LOT of things we are better off NOT remembering.” Posted by BHA

I’m with BHA on this one–this just ain’t natural.

Technology is pushing the envelope too far when it gets to the point that we’re going to need a silicon chip in order to remember how to be HUMAN.

Count me out…I reject an artificial existence based on artificial memory/intelligence.

Just thinking out loud.

I have no idea why, but this idea scares the
be-jeezus out of me.

1. Legal problems for people? More opportunity for entrapment?
2. Social consequences? Complete lack of privacy?
3. Unable to escape from your past? Unable to reinvent yourself in American fashion?

Forgetting is just as important as remembering.

What was I saying?

yes, I agree that people can go overboard by digitizing too much. Sometimes it’s best to just put away the digital camera and have fun in the moment.

A great Russian neuropsychologist wrote a book about a man you couldn’t forget — it blighted his life. Obviously, what is being discussed here is different, but certainly has a potential to be distracting and dehumanizing, perhaps in deeper ways than its convenience. More time at the screen.

The overlying assumption behind this thinking is that we consider our immediate past to be completely relevant. In most cases that is not true.

The authors can live their lives looking backwards if they wish. I prefer to live mine looking forward.

I think Catherine’s point was a good one and these two guys sound rather arrogant telling her to join an Alzheimer’s support group and toss her photo albums.

There is a point to be made for overload and its negative effects.

Three concerns:

1 – human behavior is changed when a person knows they are “being watched”

2 – slippery slope – when will people start using e-memory to sue each other – every single thing will be recorded

3 – when you’re videotaping an event you don’t really get to experience it fully – so we’ll go from living our lives and experiencing things to recording our lives and just being spectators

thanks – awesome topic

What I’ve been finding amusing about the show is that all the guests seem to forget the recording one’s life is a time-honored habit followed with pen and paper far before even the industrial revolution: by diarists and journalers.

Something that my journal will give me that a automatic tracking system never will is a snapshot of my reflections, thoughts and the specific way I chose to document events.

The lengthening of time effect that one of the callers noted is something that journalers experience every time we go back and read an entry that is 5, 10 or even 20 years old.

Can someone say 1984?

Microsoft as a “brother” of a Big Brother.

And OMG, the guests are SO super sensitive to any criticism or opposing thought. How funny, that the company they work for is the same way.

The idea of every person having a record somewhere on the the “machines” is terrifying and I hope will be extinct in a very short time.

Catherine is dead on. “never delete”? so should we never throw anything out either? What makes the few old family photographs i have so precious is that there are only a dozen or so of them. If i had hundreds of old photos, recordings, videos etc. etc. none of it would be precious. Gordon, Jim, stop dwelling on the past, get out of the office, away from a computer, dare to turn off your cellphone for a bit and go live life.

One more thing: I would love to hear someone talk about the difference between “fact” memories… data…language, and emotional and sensory memories like smells and happiness.

I can not believe how ugly these two got with the woman who said that it’s basically hording. I was thinking the exact same thing. I just think they got way too defensive.

My thoughts are this. Yeah, it’s nice to have histories of your ancestors and things that are historically valuable. However, always wallowing in the past means you aren’t making your own life rich and enjoyable and then what does that leave for your future generations? Pictures and audio files of you always looking at your great-grandfather? Listening to some audio file of your great-great-grandmother? To what end? How does this really enrich their lives?

We are built, and this is truly biological, to enjoy and live life in the moment. We remember some things that truly effect our life and the rest goes out the door. As it should. Can you imagine walking around remembering what you wore on your first day of kindergarten or how you felt when your first boyfriend broke up with you? How does that really enhance your current and future days?

Their quick and rather rude dismissal of Katherine’s VERY valid point that human’s are not meant to have total recall shows how silly their idea really is. If you recall the lady with perfect recall featured on NPR, she lives in a private hell.

I was at the National Seashore on Cape Cod last week. It was beautiful. A family had a digital recorder going the whole time. What were they going to do with that? Sit in their living room and watch 3 hours of themselves waving at the camera? And were they going to record themselves watching themselves?

It makes me angry to hear the authors condescending response to the caller who said she did not agree with their ideas. Our society seems to be headed in the direction of total dependency on something other than our own brains.

I agree with some of the sentiments expressed here regarding becoming spectators on our lives. I might take it one step further and say that people might actual live their lives in almost a manipulative way, to manipulate their own historical record.

E-memory is not “total recall” it can be as selective as the old fashioned kind and fooling ourselves that it is total is dangerous.

I’m the son of a Theosophist, and this, in Theosophical terms, is approaching the total memory of the akas[h]a — the akashic records. (Of course, any religion not your own is likely to believe in utterly wacky ideas…) The T’s say that everything that happens (any quantization?) is recorded for (eternity?) by the akas[h]a, which is somewhat akin (as I understand it) to the 19th-century “luminiferous ether”. Akas[h]ic records are not physical, as we think of physical existence.

In my younger years, we used to mention, occasionally, those of superior development who could read the akas[h]ic records. Such people, were they to be utterly trusted, would have a huge influence on criminal law, for instance.

Theosophy tells of existence in more than our everyday physical plane (as do various religions describe the hereafter), and there seems to be a trend toward bringing into the physical plane some attributes of existence in other planes.

*******

(Btw, I think Bernard B. meant “a man /who/ couldn’t forget”.)

I’m watching myself to save Big Brother the bother.

a terabyte of data & a computer won’t ever really replicate the weight of an old wooden traveling trunk, or the texture of the velum some prose is written on, or the smell of an old book.

Here there seems to be an emphasis on the act of “remembering”–of remembering memories/experiences. It appears we are valuing remembering highly. My question has to do with the act of “forgetting.” Isn’t forgetting experiences also important in our lives. When I awake, I might recall my dreams for a short period, but only insofar as I forget my dreams am I able to be fully in this life, in this world, in this moment. Conversely, when I fall asleep I forget my daily (and nightly) activities that came right before. Only in forgetting these experiences can I be fully immersed in my dreams. Could remembering over and above forgetting have negative consequences/effects?

I’m thinking a bit out loud here as well:

I already know that I have a hard time rememerbing phone numbers I USED to know by heart, because they are just stored in my cell phone. My husband doesn’t even remember my cell phone number because it has been stored in his phone since we met!

The more we rely on computers, phones, machinery to “remember” things for us, aren’t we losing a vital part of being human? There is a certain charm to telling stories or sharing memories when some of the details get changed a little, or certain old family stories aren’t remembered perfectly.

I agree with the peanut in the mason jar comment just made! We already only use about 10% of our brain. Why don’t we try to expand the way we use our brains instead of reducing our brain usage? I think we are losing ourselves to our machines…

This concept of recording everything also reminds me a bit of the “prime directive” of the Star Trek films. If you know everything you do is being recorded and saved, then your behavior will be different, even if only slightly. Your awareness that someday, in the future, that some stranger may be reviewing what you are doing, will have an impact.

I cannot begin to explain the depths to which this concept scares the hell out of me. Do you people understand the effects this kind of computerization of our lives would do to human evolution – this is outsourcing our memories to a machine. The human mind process information constantly. It mixes it, it jumbles it… it reprocesses it. That’s where innovation comes from. That’s why we no longer live in caves — AH! To ask a guy to figure out, and write out all of the ramifications of this during a 1 hour show is ridiculous. From your glib and snarky responses to and about the earlier caller concerned with the effects of this technology on the human spirit… I’m pretty convinced that you have not given this any thought at all, or you’re just blinded by a stupid geeky need to build the next cool thing and damn the consequences.

Lastly, there is a tremendous difference between emotional memory and pure data. I can smell a certain scent and literally relive certain moments.. No machine can replicate that..

Unless someone went about the trouble of trying to put this data in context, by tagging, captioning, etc. you would just have a giant mass of “what the hell is all this”.. I understand how this can be of interest, but so many parts of life are just trivial, that it would still require Scrapbooking in order to have any meaning. Overall, same process, different tech.

My great fear would be that the legal system would try and use this as evidence of confessions and such. This would also be inevitable, and mortifying.

Question for the show: what do these technologies look like? What specifically are these researchers developing? Where can one find out more about what they are creating?

Just think what the fortieth high school reunion would be like if we could have reviewed our practical jokes besides the ones that made the school paper.

Part of natural memory is the ability to inter-twine good events with bad events and provide a context. e-memory fails at this.

By over-recording human memory digitally , it affects our natural ability to be flawed !

What we’re talking about here is the fantasy of the total archive. Let’s not forget that our desire to remember the past is often times predicated on our lack of information about it. Today we have the opposite problem. One of the speakers (42 years old) was talking about how great it is to hook up with old friends on Facebook. But imagine if he had been raised with Facebook (like a lot of young people today)–he would never had lost contact with these people in the first place, instead they would be always already present. There would be no desire, no compelling nostalgia, no “whatever happened to…?” Again, to use the example the scientist brought up earlier, if you knew every single thing about your great-grandmother (all that remains of her is a blurry photo, for instance), if you had access to the total archive, would you feel the same burning desire to “reanimate” her? Would you really pore through her records?

A valid point was just made. The items we send out into the internet via email and blogs and on and on and on is actually capturable by the legal system. They don’t need to get a search warrent for your computer. They pass you by and go to the server.

I’m not afraid of Big Brother, a certain part of it is neccessary for a safe society (no, I’m not thrilled about it but some of it I accept as a lesser of two evils) but we should be mindful of it. We aren’t as invisible as we think . . .

The two researchers sound more like “salesmen” than true researchers. It would seem that Microsoft are still trying to find a market for this technology.

1) Anyone who trusts Microsoft to store their memories deserves what they get. “Microsoft Genuine Memory Manager has determined that your account is not valid. Please remit payment to Microsoft to re-access your memories. (Please keep a written note of this on your person, as memory of this notice (along with all other unlicensed memories) are not recorded.)” More than any other company on Earth, Microsoft has locked away, mis-filed, and outright destroyed the important data of millions. What happens when you try to remember your favorite recipe for your kid (hmm, what was his name again..) and all you get is the Blue Screen of Death?

2) To a HUGE degree, our memories ARE our identities. Memories are associative, not indexed. What we bring to art, to conversation, to our professions… these are, to a very large degree, the function of our abilities to recall germane experiences from among the flood of our pasts and, rude comments of the authors aside, to disregard and even FORGET those things that do not contribute to our abilities. You say “I am a novelist/doctor/nice guy to talk to.” These are true not because you have easy access to dictionaries/PDR’s/Mark Twain’s writings… it is because the skills and experiences are on the surface of your memory, well traversed and ready to leap out to your aid. If all our memory is externalized, then what we ARE, our IDENTITIES will simply be reflections of our proficiency to google (or “bing”) our own memories.

3) That a person can remember her family fondly (after ALL they’ve surely put her through). A parent using Outsourced Memory would have to “scroll through” thousands of hours of screaming, diaper changes, and tantrums to find just a few sincere hugs or charming statements. Humans are not objective creatures, and it is only our ability to edit out the more-or-less constant insanity of our daily lives that makes us able to pretend we are.

4) The authors’ primary thrust seems to be the digitalization of what is already cumbersome record. “Oh, how convenient that I can just look up a birth certificate.” The technology of writing on paper has forced us to become packrats. We carry around 7 years of tax records, etc. because we are required to by law (itself a written record). No one in their right minds would carry around so much useless paper without the constant demands of a preposterous society (becoming more and more like Gilliam’s Brazil). How much paper must you fill out now to get health care? Enroll in college? Buy a house? What convenience if you only had to provide a URL… except when you receive some error message “Object not set to an instance of an object, healthcare request refused.” We have already gone too far down this road — we need less data (NOT more) to be required for proving our identities, accessing the services of our society, preventing every action from requiring lawyers and IT staff.

5) We already externalize our memories, yes. Think how carefully we treat our diaries and photo albums, how sad we are when they are lost. But, this sort of external storage takes effort and, so, we make only the most precious notes, choosing most often those things that jog our (plain ole neurological) memories. BECAUSE these records require effort we do not take them for granted and understand their fragility (no one writes anything in a diary without also considering what will happen if it’s found by someone else, and what might happen if it’s burned up in a fire). We are aware of our investments — important seeds of data recorded outside our skulls and never taken lightly. Once all memories can be taken for granted as recorded, there will no longer be any relative weight. What you had for breakfast will be just as important as the name of your spouse. And, when such a comprehensive diary is lost in a (server room) fire — you will be an amnesiac with only the most superficial impressions remaining in your (unused and so nearly atrophied) neuro-memory, the magazine version of your former self.

6) One of the largest parts of being human is managing, recalling, dreaming about, re-inventing, and supplementing our subjective, associative memories. How we handle the memory of a personal tragedy defines us. Once Universal ExoMemory Management is in place, human nature will change into something much more like computer science. We’ll be able to simply delete (or “archive”) inconvenient memories. That’s nice for the mugging victim, but what about the mugger? We could have (and, eventually, be required to keep) multiple accounts, for instance, a work-memory that has to be turned in to corporate every day at 5pm. Rich people will be able to buy, rent, or trade the memories of others. Criminals could get rich selling copies of their exploits on the black market. Poor people will work 16 hours a day at menial jobs for slave wages and salve the psychological pain by buying the memory of having spent a nice night at the movies or dinner with friends.

We have already gone too far as a people in externalizing our memories. There have been benefits, the Bible, the Pincipia Mathematica, Poor Richard’s Almanac, the grocery list,… but we’ve now reached a point where most of we write is on computers, and 80% of it is schlock (or worse). We don’t NEED to capture everything and drown in an eternal waterfall of files — we need FEWER records and more focus on making our lives richer. However inconvenient remembering things within the skull may be, it’s what humans do. More than anything else it’s the source of our identity, our individuality, and our excellence. It might be easier and more pleasant to live life simply as a search engine of your own memories, speaking exclusively in hyperlinks, but we’ve already written programs that do this better than humans ever could. If that’s all that humans are to become, collectors, reviewers, and indexers of infinite-resolution, timestamped, geocoded data, then we have already rendered ourselves obsolete.

My 2 cents:

1. Some things should be forgotten: trauma, old boyfriends, painful childhood nicknames…

2. What’s to prevent other people from manipulating my lifestream out there on the cloud? Gordon has already manipulated the history of the computer industry by moving the Computer Museum from Boston to Silicon Valley and forgetting/deleting the innovations/history/contributions of us denizens of the Greater Maynard Area to that history. “Don’t delete” should apply to collective memory too.

I agree with the previous post that these are rude guests for you to have on.
I find them rather dense and mean-spirited. They don’t understand
the callers, let alone the implications of what they seem to be promoting.

They are seriously lacking Tom, this is the worst show of many I’ve listened to.

Please follow this story by asking Gordon and Jim back when you next do a story on zero-tolerance and excessive litigation. White house e-mails will be nothing compared to subpoenas concerning everything from car accidents to playground fist-fights. Already eleven year old children are required to behave in ways we didn’t expect of men until they reached thirty, and we sue over truly accidental tragedies as if life came with a guarantee of perfection instead of the simple ability to pursue happiness. What will be the lag time between the ability to record everything, and the requirement to do so?

We’ve reached a point where our technology is advancing much faster than our ability to digest it and adapt our morals and ethics to suit. (Sitting in the middle of a fairly quiet public place LOUDLY talking into a cell phone, teens “sexting” and sending lude pictures.) Gotta believe a train wreck is on the way, sooner or later.

The Microsoft “salesman” who so offensively recommended the one caller join the ranks of the Alzheimer’s community and additionally throw away her photo albums proves how uninvested the tech world is in engaging in any discussion contrary the the blind embrace of their products. The Microsoft representative displayed the supreme arrogance we’ve grown to expect from the corporate world. At best, these corporate attitudes are short-sighted; at worst, they are disingenuous.

What was lacking from the show today was a genuine examination of what truly memory is and how it is more than the sum of its parts. No one can argue the value of keeping journals, saving photos and videos, and storing personal information, etc., but those types of information storage do not include all of the sensory components involved in the experiential aspects of creating memories. Within the notion of experiencing the world virtually, the tech community has generally avoided the mention of two types of sensory input: tactile and olfactory. Companies developing tech products really can’t create products with those elemental parts of human experience. Our understanding of sensory input is very limited; what little understanding we do have pertains to mechanics more so than processing. Comprehensively understanding such processes really should be left to more ethical scientific study than the kind explored by software companies!

Even if, in the future, technology will evolve to the point of microchip implantation which alters body chemistry and produces effects similar to organically experiencing aromas and tactile stimulation, we would be wise as a society to tread very carefully on such ideas.

The “natural” environment of human beings is a small-scale group of extended biological and fictive kin, where the members of the group share a deep social memory of everything that has happened to them as individuals and as a collective. We are recreating that dynamic with our information technologies.

This is not necessarily a new evolutionary moment, but a turning point where we are using information technologies to share and backup ever more of our important data (to say it’s all is quite an exaggeration). As a species we are very comfortable memorizing and learning large amounts of information from others as a community. The Odyssey originated as a lyric poem in Pre-Classical Greece. In non-literate cultures children learn to use and share the information to create scores of complicated tools and technological systems in order to perpetuate and change their communities.

The guests make many important points about the characteristics of our new information cloud environment, and the exciting emergent properties will frequently be based in how we use it to adapt and augment very ancient human ways of being.

Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it; but focusing on the past to such an extent prevents one from living in the present moment.
I have journalled during difficult times in my past to avoid making the same mistakes over and over. It helped.
Chuang Tzu once wrote: “You never find happiness until you stop looking for it.” It’s not in the future, nor in the past, but in the PRESENT MOMENT.
If you learn to meditate in the present moment, you will never need fear forgetting.

this is catherine chiming back in. I got a laugh from the guests response to my “hoarding” comment ,,,as a matter of fact I work with alzhiemer’s clients Memory is a fascinating thing and the loss of memory is nothing to kid about. Down here in SC all it takes is one good hurricane to claim all one’s material memories. thanks tom for having these guests on ,,I had no idea that keeping track of one’s every moment was possible ..and we have had a good debate about whether it is desirable
catherine on edisto island

As a nurse I have recommended detailed diaries for people. People with Meniers can benefit from tracking their stress levels and salt intake. Dieters benefit from keeping track of their eating and exercise. People benefit all of the time from keeping a journal. People learn what triggers an allergy attack. Might this be used in similar ways only with smart technology? One could possible dream of having computer input given to us with specific detail about out life that day.

‘HAVING’ memories (i.e. having access to digital or physical images and words relating to moments in time already past) and ‘having instant access to information’ (practical data) is not the same as ‘rememberING’, or knowing – or understanding anything – is it?; it’s more like interesting shorthand and certainly not art. And ‘having’ is not the same as ‘being’. Somehow language seems inadequately nuanced in this discussion, unable to distinguish between direct and indirect experience.

Living versus clinging to anecdotes and images as knowledge and perhaps as a substitute for living in real time?

Are there a wealth of opportunities in the tech. abilities to record? Surely, especially if we handle them lightly and if we sink into wondering what and who else we all are and can sink into ‘not knowing’ as a precursor to seeing newly. But I interpret a lack of curiosity to inquire into sense-experience and the nature of memory itself in these guests. A bit of a ‘material’ discussion, eh?.

Organization… Categorization… Archives…

I thought this discussion could have benefited from someone in the Library and Information Science realm. There was little (if no) description of how the digital information would be categorized and by whom. Would there be a standard taxonomy? How would it be migrated and managed when the technology that created the data is outdated? A personal archive of the magnitude presented, while likely, is an organizational challenge to put it mildly. Tom and producers – Please include an expert on digital libraries or digital archives in future similar discussions!

The idea that we get comfortable with storing memory elsewhere but our heads is quite concerning. We have become so dependent on technology that we practically live our lives on auto-pilots, which may actually be counterproductive as far as our cognitive abilities and healthy mind are concerned.

Databases of our digitally capturable interactions can be used in the development of cognitive prosthetics.

This so called enhanced system is a lazy, inadequate, cop-out argument for what will never replace or substitute our God given brains. The Human Brain will always be superior to any technology we can develop or invent.
The real problem is that individuals do not train or exercise their brains to remember those things that are important.

Just because we live in a digital age doesn’t mean that everything should adapt or be changed to it. Our brains are fine and with much activity we can remember everything if we choose. I for one do not want my most precious details, identity, and other intimate details in some digital cloud, or a device no matter how sophisticated it may be. People should try to use their brains more and it will serve them until death.
Again nothing will ever surpass in storage or capacity the human brain. There are reasons hard to explain why people have selective memory, but having this e-memory will not solve the problem.

we don’t use media to record, we use it to perform. our memories aren’t experiences anymore, they are performances. our media-driven memories exemplify baudrillard’s second stage toward simulacrum (perversion of reality).

let me elaborate..

we hardly use media to record experiences anymore, we use cameras and the internet as audiences (and mirrors) to perform to. therefore, our memories aren’t experiences anymore, they are performances. they don’t represent the reality of the present which they are supposed to be recording, they are creating what we think or want that reality to be. our media-driven memories exemplify baudrillard’s second stage toward simulacrum (perversion of reality).

think of teenagers’ profiles and pictoral/verbal recordings on facebook and other areas of the internet. i think the ability and immense encouragement to constantly record and broadcast of oneself (or the perverted reality of oneself, rather) can cause serious identity problems.

The guest’s sneering, condescending replies to thoughtful, well articulated concerns raised by some of the callers was not in keeping with On Point’s usual high standards of discourse. It belied the arrogance of technocrats quick dismiss contrary views as rooted in ignorance. Doing so they are sure to garner the Luddite backlash they mock.

I think it was great to hear how snotty and flippant, and shallow, those two micro-soft heads were.
As for the Alzheimers comment: having Alzheimers is not the same thing as not remembering what you ate at some diner in Arizona. Not to mention, I would guess that hoarding all your life’s moments on digital recall would lead to something like Alzheimers – I’m with the “peanut in a Mason jar” comment: like limbs left unused, a brain not having to remember anything will atrophy soon enough.
Also, what happens if you lose that little doohickey in your pocket?
Doug Rushkoff was a breath of sensibility. He was intelligent, critical, and had a sense of humour! I’d way rather hang out with him than those two recording freaks. “Don’t you feel more confident having your cell phone remember everything?” Hell no.
To Tom and Fortran Girl who followed: thanks for those posts.

******I think Catherine’s point was a good one and these two guys sound rather arrogant telling her to join an Alzheimer’s support group and toss her photo albums.

There is a point to be made for overload and its negative effects.******

I thought so too. Catherine was simply pointing out her concerns.

What is wrong with the last caller Betsy?? I hope she can stay to the topic instead of criticizing another caller about how they sounded. And Betsy is whiny.

Catherine didn’t sound rude at all to me, strange how words travels through ears and come out totally different.

We have to remember the guest from Microsoft sounded just like a salesman, phrases like “Don’t you want your media to record everything for you”, sounded just like those TV commercials. And we are so easily sold.

The original guests were a bit dopey and didn’t make much sense. The “don’t delete anything” mantra is insane actually. It reminds me of my mother-in-law who “doesn’t throw out anything”. Old and useless things pile up and she can’t get rid of them. Sometimes they even make there way in the mail to us and we toss them.
I think that there is some rationally sane purposes for our technology and I intend to use them in a rational fashion. But I also intend to focus my attention more firmly in the future.

Has anyone watched this movie “Gattaca” from 1997. It presents a major interesting argument between a naturally born human being and a perfect genetically engineer human being, who has stronger will to “survive” at the end.

Great movie.

The Microsoft employees speaking on the program seemed to forget that important information such as medical records, birth certificates, and photographs are all recorded now, today, on devices people carry with them or have Readily available. The freeing experience they report having by not needing to search for a document in the physical realm rather than the digital one is already available by trusting your hospital with medical records, your phone with contacts, and your local government with important records. You may search where u have been by looking at your cars navigation history, your previous google map searches, and phone applications such as loopt. The microphone and video aspect is currently added to anyone’s memory bank by taking recordings on their devices, storing them on the computer, and emailing them around for others to experience as well. If what Microsoft is selling here is the consolidation of these memory aids, Apple has beat them with the iPhone, iPod, and compatible computers and applications. These researchers clearly misunderstand the storing of information in the brain, assuming if we are not required to remember intimate moments of our lives, brain space will be used for something more rewarding. They also lack a fundamental understanding of why people Twitter, facebook, blog and myspace: they do this to make connections to other humans, to self reward by appearing witty through one hundred twenty word or less quips, and to spy on friends and family, NOT to chronicle every piece of minutae in their lives. This is an unnecessary consolidation of facts that will only lead to a realization of self-unimportance upon watching your own daily activities. The brain fabricates to downplay harmful existential crises and replaying the details of true life will erase these capabilities harming the human psyche.

Does anyone know the artist/song of the interlude music? It was played twice, once at 11:00.

[...] recently listened to an NPR podcast about how digital technologies are becoming a surrogate form of memory. Facebook, blogs, even [...]

Godron Bell and Jim Gemmell appear to be a mixture of Dr. Frankenstein, William Buckley and a PC none of which is endearing to the human condition. These two need to take a few “humanities classes”.