Losing Control

Up until now I had always thought of memory as a largely internal process, functioning within my own mind. But the reality it seems, is that entrenched in my day to day life are technologies which can be seen to function as an extension, or what Bernard Stiegler refers to as an ‘exteriorization’ (1) of my memory.

The fact of the matter is that I am utterly reliant on everything from my diary to my mobile phone, computer and GPS. But up until now I had never given much though to the wider implications of this reliance and realizing this I am now wondering; should I be concerned by this dependence on these 'mnemotechnologies'?(2)

While I wouldn’t exactly call my self an optimist, I couldn’t help but question the bleak outlook presented in Bernard Stiegler’s Anamnesis and Hypomnesis.(3)

By exteriorizing our memories, are we sacrificing our control over knowledge?

Bernard Stiegler writes that:

“These cognitive technologies, to which we confide a greater and greater part of our memory, cause us to lose an ever-greater part of our knowledge.” (4)

But how can we lose something that we never had?

According to Stiegler;

“To lose a cell phone is to lose the trace of the telephone numbers of our correspondents and to realise that they are no longer in the psychical memory but in the apparatuss’s.” (5)

But were they ever committed to psychical memory in the first place? I think I speak for most people when I say that I use on a regular basis, only a fraction of the mass of accumulated numbers stored on my mobile phone. I can honestly say that I would recall from my own memory, perhaps a handful of phone numbers and sure, if I were to lose (or break) my phone I would also be losing pretty much all of the numbers on it. But if I had never had the phone in the first place (or any other medium by which I could externally store those numbers), would I have accumulated so many numbers in the first place. I certainly would not have personally memorized each and every number. The reality is that I would have no way of storing the accumulated knowledge of my extended contact list without such technologies by which to store them in the first place. The same can be said I think, for all technical forms of memory, not just the mobile phone. By exteriorizing our memory we are facilitating the creation of knowledge beyond our own individual capacities for recollection.

Surely the risk of losing knowledge is outweighed by the exponential ability to create and store knowledge which is facilitated by this exteriorization of memory.

References:

1. Stiegler, Bernard (n.d.) ‘Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: Plato as the first thinker of the proletarianisation’ <http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-and-hypomnesis>
2. ibid.
3. ibid.
4. ibid.
5. ibid.