You Autocomplete Me – Memory, Forgetting and Storage in the Digital Age

When i was a teenager – i wanted to know everything about everything – especially about movies, books and music. I used to store so much info in my brain – so many names, facts, trivia bits, songs lyrics, you name it – i wonder how my head didn’t explode. In the past, I used to have a good memory – It was important to me to know artists’ discography, filmmakers’ filmography, writers’ bibliography and the possible connections between them (filmmakers that made music-videos or musicians and writers that made movies were a special treat). Today, l often feel like I don’t know my right from my left. As my friend @SageeB puts it: If someone asked me a while ago what is the most important thing a culture journalist needs, I would have told him a good memory: you have to remember tons of information about musicians, producers, actors, directors, writers, authors, publishing houses, you name it. If someone asked me the same question today, I would say that a journalist, any journalist, needs an Internet connection, and that’s it.

Whether or not I agree with Sagee, it’s obvious that the Internet, and Internet technology, allows us today access to information beyond anything we knew before. But how does technology affect the way we remember, forget and especially store things in our memories? How embedded are our memory contents in our daily actions? and to what extent our daily actions reflect (and even reinforce) our dependency on technology?

chasing the internet is hard to do

Is it the information overload prevalent in the Digital Age that makes questions of accessibility and storage (terms emanating from our interactions with computers rather than from a psychological, or even cognitive discourse) relevant to our day-to-day conduct?

It seems that the more dependent we become on the technology around us, the lazier we get (or even stupid) and it is commonplace now that our gadgets, and our online “hang outs” and databases, have become extensions of our brain. On these satellites prosthetic memory pieces are easily accessed, usually to supplement, but sometimes to replace real memory access.

I no longer bother to remember which actor played in which film as IMDB has all this info available for me. Same for albums info (release dates, band members, etc.) thanks to websites such as AllMusic.com that keep track of discography for us. I sometimes feel that I can clear my memory from those trivia data pieces, and yet – whenever I need to stretch my brain and dig out a piece of meaninglessness data – I am so proud of myself!

pieces of what

It seems to me that nowadays the online world, on our computers or the cellular sphere (which no one can deny becomes increasingly connected, almost always-on), has become the heir of so many basic skills that we used our brain for not so long ago. Here are a few examples of how our “convergence” with the internet and with digital surroundings have been affecting our inner dealings.

The Spell Checker

I heard several people say that in a few decades no one will know how to spell anymore. As spell checking becomes more and more popular (it practically runs on every software/web service we’re using), more automated (it can already offer just 2 or 3 options), and more and more advanced, we can ease up on remembering the exact spelling of words. Google Wave’s spelling feature, for instance, can even handle a sentence as tricky as “Iceland is an island”, even if it has two type-o’s: “Icland is an icland”

i have a spelling chcker. It came with my PC

AutoComplete

On top of forgetting how to spell, there’s another skill we’re losing. This one is actually not a big threat to human civilization as spelling, but it’s an alarming trend. Especially because it is so distracting and adds to the noise we are already surrounded with whenever we’re connected. Algorithms included in automated search reflect the popularity of the concept of “wisdom of the crowds”. We come to rely on  what other people know, or search for or “just” interested in, and features like “AutoComplete” reflect that. I like to consider the “AutoComplete” as a direct access into the collective memory, in a way.

Having written and researched so much about the ways public and private memory shape and intersect, I am fascinated by this feature. It is merely an addition to the old faithful search box, where when a user begins typing a search term, several completion options (the popular options) are presented. The “AutoComplete” has become a “must” feature in most websites and is considered a “hot” trend in the search and UI worlds. And it’s not limited to words – images can be added too.

This is really a trifle, and still it changes the way we access information stored on our and on other people’s brains.It is in memories’ nature to evoke new and potentially different emotions every time they are recalled. and I can’t help wondering what will be the consequences of relying more and more on collective memory? Will we ever “stop to remember”, will we bother to complete things on our own? “AutoComplete” has also been on the focus of many jokes - they’re even selling merchandise.

and carriers

You AutoComplete me T-shirt

Phone Numbers and  Cell Phone Memories

Evidently, it’s not just the Internet that encourages us to clear room in our heads for details we no longer need to store in our minds. Our handheld devices memories do that too.

I can’t remember the last time I memorized a phone number. It was probably years ago – It surprises me that I still know by heart the phone numbers of most of my childhood friends. Isn’t it awkward that I have all those numbers in my head of flats where the parents of my elementary school friends may or may not live?

I find it even more awkward that I never bothered to memorize the numbers I use most frequently, those belonging to my friends today. And why would I want that? They are all safely stored on my cell phone and whenever I want to call them I simply dial. No need to store  them in my head to.

Our cell phones have more memory spaces than we do (at least effectively…), so we can simply rely on them to supply us with the details we need.

Defiling Folders – on the Ontology of Digital Beings

I have been working for over two weeks now on a post following my presentation on how the 5 Senses are simulated online and on the relationship between sensual experience and interface.

While I am somewhat overwhelmed with the numerous examples and the immense details i have to plow through when it comes to simulating senses online (and the reasons why taste and smell are so much more difficult to represent and replicate on any interface/ machine) – I started thinking about a new project – submitting a paper to a special issue of the magazine “The Philosophy of Computer Science” dedicated to Minds and Machines (scheduled for Fall 2010).

The call for paper (CFP as academics like to call it) lists no less than 27 topics – but question no. 7 immediately grabbed me:

“What kinds of things are digital objects? Do we need a new ontological category to house them?”

Thinking about the ontology of digital being and on “digital identity matters” as some researchers already put it, threw my brain into a conundrum and started that tickle that i guess i am addicted to.

After sometime i realized that even though i may not know much about Computer Science i am rather familiar with digital beings and i’d love to think about how they occupy space in the world, the relationships they hold among themselves, and the differences between digital and physical objects.

I’d like to do a George Perec inspired exploration – and to move from smaller objects (or spaces) to larger ones. Georges Perec was a French writer and a structuralist who experimented not only with language and content but also with form. For example, he wrote a book without the letter E (La Disparition), a 500 words long palindrome and composed crosswords for living.

Georges a un chat

The first item that i’d look at will be the autograph, from there i’ll move to letters (or e-mail to be more specific, including spam), folders, books and finally – libraries. Initially i wanted to write about songs and images as well, but they’re less textual based and the topic is already huge.

There’s also a song i like, which is just perfect for this post – it’s conveniently called “Folder” (!) by a band called “Plastic Operator” and the animated music video for the song was directed by Pete Circuitt.

to be continued…