Memory Is Not the Same as Remembering

On Memorial Day (yes, I know, already a week and thus light years ago), when store-wide sales do their best to blot out the memory of why we remember on that day, I had my own recollections.

I revisited history — the wars of my father and grandfather, the war that defined my generation — and thought about the ultimate sacrifice people have made. I felt comfort and just a tinge of sadness at the very personal memories of being a kid and participating in Memorial Day rituals with my grandfather, my father and my uncle, all veterans of different wars, all no longer here.

Memories aren't merely cerebral, they often trigger the senses. They are visceral. And on Memorial Day, I know I am not alone getting teary at the first few notes of taps. My memory of taps was reinforced not so long ago by hearing it played by an Armed Forces Honor Guard at my father’s funeral. Memories have layers that build.

Memory, some say, is what makes us human. Remembering the past allows us to imagine a different future in that profoundly, uniquely human way, where wonderfully odd leaps and synapse links come out of our past experiences and often, the unspoken but very emotional memories. They help us think differently.

Some scientists, in fact, believe that the unreliability of human memory — especially when it comes to things like witnessing crimes — is organically connected to creativity. Memory is the starting point for both but then the mind journeys in different directions.

So, on Memorial Day I began to wonder what memory means in a digital age. What are the implications?

Some more from scientists. There’s been a fairish amount written about transactive memory. In an analog world, transactive memory meant depending on people around you to remember things — dates, names, addresses. Where would I be without my wife reminding me about our children and grandchildren’s birthdays? My only problem, who reminds me about our anniversary…

In the digital world, thanks to search engines, scientists are finding that the internet is now our source for transactive memory. And that people who use the internet are remembering less and less because they know where to go to immediately access the information.

While there are some who are wringing their hands, anxious about digital’s long-term implications on critical and logical thinking, I join the many who think it is pretty wonderful to have access to so many memories that we can retrieve at any time, share, refresh and reinterpret.

I have long been a fan of Sherlock Holmes’ pre-digital data sort and memory downloads. He believed that it was important only to “store” knowledge that is useful. As he said: “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose… It is a mistake to think that this little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.” And anyone who has watched the new Sherlock, knows that his exceptional “mind palace” is an astonishing digitally-inspired analogue.

The worrisome part to me is that we often neglect to bring our digital memories to life. We close our devices and forget. We don’t use our memories. If memory becomes part of our virtual world separate from our real world, how will we create real change?

Just two weeks ago, I wrote about Click and Shout — how social activity is meaningless without social activism that takes place in the real world. If we translate that to memory, while the internet has become our mind palace, we can’t abdicate the responsibility to act on what we remember.

Just read the headlines. We've just seen another mass killing in Santa Barbara, adding to that awful list that keeps getting longer. From Aurora to Oak Creek to Newtown and now to Santa Barbara, have our memories of every awful killing just found their outrage online?

In a world where memory is seemingly infinite, shouldn't we remember more, not less? Shouldn't we act more, not less?