Thanks For The Memory (footnote i)

As I recall, I've spoken on the subject of memory in the past, although I can't remember very much about what I said.ⁱⁱ As far as I remember, however, I mentioned the idea mostly in passing, and this time I'd like to focus on some aspects that I find interesting and intriguing.

We live in an age when the need for memory is becoming less and less important. (More critical very often is the inability to forget – or the inability to have others forget.ⁱⁱⁱ) With internet searches, we can find out much more than we were ever able to remember when it was necessary to either know it ourselves or to go to the library to learn it, and we can access the information far more quickly than before. And it's no longer necessary to remember the multiplication tables or more complex mathematical formulas. As long as your computer is working, you can find out almost anything you need to know. You can even see pictures of it.^iv

And notwithstanding Santayana and the others who have voiced similar concerns, there isn't even any need to know history. It's all on line. You don't have to remember the Maine, the Alamo, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11. A few clicks of your mouse and you'll have more information about those events than you could possibly remember. That kind of ability is no longer of importance. Don't waste your neurons and synapses on them. Memory and history are things of the past.

Yet we are fixated on memory. We used to be happy when we could teach some mice to run through a maze, and we offered them rewards for doing so. But we've gone well beyond that now, and beyond Pavlovian responses as well. We can now pick memory apart – we can identify its pieces. Long-term and short-term memory used to be the main categories that we considered, but now we deal with working memory, episodic memory, semantic memory, instrumental learning, motor memory, and other types.^v

Memory has become an industry. Not just the chips in your computer. Study of memory is an important academic pursuit – whether animals or plants^vi are the subject. How memory works is a significant issue for education and, recognizing that numerous nations are outpacing us in this area, we have to be concerned with all the issues that relate to learning in any way. It would be wonderful if our kids could remember history or science as well as they remember hip-hop lyrics.^vii Mnemonics and test results rely on memory, but more important is the knowledge which we can acquire, and the ability to relate that knowledge to facts previously learned. If we are going to create something new, we need to know (and remember) what's old. We have to stand on the shoulders of those who came before.

But there are other needs which memory fulfills. For example, it's critical to our commerce. Our advertising depends on it. It's important that consumers remember our brand names and all that we've taught them about the quality of our products. It doesn't matter if the claims are true, as long as we get enough people to remember them and to buy the things we make or market.

And we need memory in order to play games. How else can we expect to get to the 36^th level of whatever it is that has our attention. And the chess masters, as well as those who play games like Concentration, won't do very well if their focus on the game at hand is not supplemented by additional information that they learned and remember.

More important though, we're concerned about Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. And not only because we might forget how to utilize our computers. We hear almost daily of people who have wandered off and who lack any concept of where they are going or of how to return home – if they remember that they have homes. As the population ages, memory loss is becoming a more and more serious problem. It's a problem for the patients, their caregivers, and the American economy in general. For example, according to the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, the medical cost of the disease is one hundred billion dollars annually.^viii And that doesn't include other dementias, nor the fact that the cost is certain to go up. (Of course all that money has to go somewhere, and that's to nursing homes, home healthcare workers, scam artists, and anyone else with an idea about how to benefit from the situation. It's all “zero sum.” The money doesn't disappear. Someone gets it.)

But, from my perspective, the greatest merit of memory is that it allows me to have memories. They're not the kinds of things that Google can fetch for me. They're personal. No one remembers my childhood, or that of my children, as I do; no one can call back my college days or my courtship^ix of my wife as I experienced it. And no one wants to. Everyone has memories of his own. Nostalgia. Déjà vu. Sometimes the memories are real and sometimes they're idealized. And sometimes they're created from the “whole cloth.” In any event, they'll be forgotten when we forget them. But that's OK. Those memories will disappear as we will – as those who came before us did.^x We all want to be remembered, but we know that our stories will soon be forgotten. How long does a legacy last? In fact, how long does your own memory last?

So if you're thinking about remembering something for a long time, or being remembered for a long time, fuggedaboudit.

Next episode: “The Only Thing” – Henry Russell Sanders's philosophy and ours.

I        It was Bob Hope's theme song, from “The Big Broadcast of 1938,” in which he starred. He sang the song with Shirley Ross.

ii       The older I get, the more I forget. I try to deal with that problem by making lists. Whenever I think of something interesting, I write it down. Unfortunately, however, there are times when I can't make notes. Like when I'm in the shower. I think of things that I want to remember and try very hard to keep them “on line,” but I know I'm going to forget a lot of my ideas. And that's one of my most accurate insights, since I frequently forget the unwritten thoughts.

iii     Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

iv      You can even see pictures of memory. Here's Salvatore Dali's “Persistence of Memory.”

         I don't understand it either.  (If the picture does not appear on your computer, you can see it by going to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory)

v        I can't remember them all and doing so is too complicated anyway.

vi      http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201401156399/research/move-over-elephants-mimosas-have-memories-too. (Don't say things you don't want them to know. They may remember. And they may tell them to someone else.)

vii      In my day it was batting averages and car models – at least among the boys. I don't know what the girls' obsessions were.

viii     http://www.alzfdn.org/AboutAlzheimers/cost.html

ix       Does the whole idea of courtship exist as it did more than half a century ago?

x        Do you remember your great grandparents? Or those who came before them? Or even after them. Each generation makes way for the next, and too many memories would occupy too much space and keep us from making our own. And it's our own that will sustain us as we get older.