(no subject)
"We've reached a critical mass point where the amount of memory we have externalized in books and databases (to name a few sources) now exceeds the amount of memory contained within our collective biological bodies. In other words, there's more memory 'out there' than exists inside 'all of us'. We peripheralized our essence.
Given this new situation, the presumption of the essence of the notion of 'history' becomes not necessarily dead but somewhat 'beside the point'. Access to memory replaces historical knowledge as a way for our species to process its past. Memory has replaced history-and this is not bad news. On the contrary, it's excellent news because it means we're no longer doomed to repeat our mistakes, we can edit ourselves as we go along like an on-screen document. The transition from history at the center to memory on the periphery may prove to be initially bumpy as people shed their intellectual inerta on the issue, but the transition is an inevitability, and thank heavens we have changed the nature of change itself-the prospect of cylical wars and dark ages and golden ages has never particularly appealed to me. And the democratization of memory can only accelerate the obsolecense of history as we once understood it. History has been revealed as a fluid intellectual construct, susceptible to revisionism, in which a set of individuals with access to a large database dominates another set with less access. The age-old notion of 'knowledge is power' is overturned when all memory is copy-and-pase-able - knowledge becomes wisdom, and creativity and itelligence, previously thwarted by lacl of access to new ideas, can flourish."
-Microserfs.
Given this new situation, the presumption of the essence of the notion of 'history' becomes not necessarily dead but somewhat 'beside the point'. Access to memory replaces historical knowledge as a way for our species to process its past. Memory has replaced history-and this is not bad news. On the contrary, it's excellent news because it means we're no longer doomed to repeat our mistakes, we can edit ourselves as we go along like an on-screen document. The transition from history at the center to memory on the periphery may prove to be initially bumpy as people shed their intellectual inerta on the issue, but the transition is an inevitability, and thank heavens we have changed the nature of change itself-the prospect of cylical wars and dark ages and golden ages has never particularly appealed to me. And the democratization of memory can only accelerate the obsolecense of history as we once understood it. History has been revealed as a fluid intellectual construct, susceptible to revisionism, in which a set of individuals with access to a large database dominates another set with less access. The age-old notion of 'knowledge is power' is overturned when all memory is copy-and-pase-able - knowledge becomes wisdom, and creativity and itelligence, previously thwarted by lacl of access to new ideas, can flourish."
-Microserfs.