Hybrid memory, cognitive technology and self

Recent years have seen an explosion in the production and use of technologies that allow us to record, store and recall ever-increasing amounts of information about our lives. Some welcome these trends as offering new possibilities for self-understanding and expression. Others think that things have already gone too far and worry deeply about what the future might hold. Does mem-tech really promise (or threaten) a radical change to the cognitive profile of human beings? If so, how are we to assess the possibilities and attempt to understand whether they offer a hopeful or dangerous turn in the human condition? This paper attempts to develop a balanced understanding of current trends in mem-tech and also consider some of its more probable future trends. In so doing it identifies four factors about the new memory devices: Capaciousness; incorporability; autonomy; and entanglement that suggest not just technical, but important psychological implications.

[1]  N. Carr.  Is Google Making Us Stupid? , 2008, The Best Technology Writing 2009.

[2]  Stephanie Hemelryk Donald,et al.  Technologizing the word , 2009 .

[3]  Jim Gemmell,et al.  The E-Memory Revolution. , 2009 .

[4]  M. Donald.  A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness , 2001 .

[5]  L. S. Vygotksy.  Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes , 1978 .

[6]  Eli Pariser,et al.  The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You , 2011 .

[7]  N. Carr.  The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember , 2010 .

[8]  Mikko Tapani Karaiste.  Delete: The virtue of forgetting in the digital age , 2010 .

[9]  D. Parfit.  Reasons and Persons , 1986 .

[10]  Kevin Warwick.  Natural-born cyborgs: Minds, technologies and the future of human intelligence , 2003 .

[11]  David R. Olson,et al.  The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading , 1996 .

[12]  J. Hayden.  Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age , 2011 .

[13]  E. Tenner.  Why things bite back : technology and the revenge of unintended consequences , 1996 .

[14]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[15]  Matthew C. Makel,et al.  Growing up digital , 2020, Transformative Digital Humanities.

[16]  Ian Stevenson,et al.  Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past. , 1997 .

[17]  Jean-François Blanchette.  Total Recall: How the E-memory Revolution Will Change Everything; DELETE: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age , 2010 .

[18]  Shahram Izadi,et al.  SenseCam: A Retrospective Memory Aid , 2006, UbiComp.

[19]  Jaron Lanier,et al.  You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto , 2010 .

[20]  S. Mithen.  The Prehistory of the Mind , 1996 .

[21]  Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger,et al.  Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing , 2007 .

[22]  S. Gallagher.  Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science , 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[23]  Martin H. Levinson.  Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other , 2011 .

[24]  R. Gregory,et al.  Mind in Science. A History of Explanations in Psychology and Physics , 1983 .

[25]  Robert D. Rupert.  Challenges to the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition , 2004 .

[26]  Abigail Sellen,et al.  Beyond total capture , 2010, Commun. ACM.

[27]  M. Donald.  Précis of Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition , 1993, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[28]  A. Clark.  Supersizing the Mind , 2008 .

[29]  J. Sutton.  Exaograms and Interdisciplinarity: history, the extended mind, and the civilizing process , 2006 .

[30]  Steve Hodges,et al.  Neuropsychological Rehabilitation , 2013 .