An analysis of sources on the externalization of memory

In the late 16th century, Jesuit Priest and Missionary Matteo Ricci set out from Italy to bring Christian faith and Western teachings to Ming dynasty China. He hoped to impress the Chinese with his vast memory backed by several interesting memory techniques. His most famous was the creation of "memory palaces," or imaginary buildings that stored images and pictures in certain locations, increasing the storage capacity of memory by categorizing information in the form of visual symbols organized within the imagined building. 

In The Memory Palace, Jonathan Spence tells Ricci's story using several images Ricci created himself: four images derived from events in the bible and others from a book on the art of memory that Ricci wrote in Chinese and circulated among member of the Ming dynasty elite. At the end of the novel, the main character arrives at the memory palace and marvels at "the gleaming walls and colonnades, the porticoes and great carved doors, behind which are stored the images born of his reading, his experience, and his faith" (Spence 266).

Though the reason for Ricci's journey doesn't relate to my proposed thesis, his methods of impressing the Chinese certainly do. Ricci's Memory Palace is one of the oldest examples of using an external object to store information. Ricci was able to maintain such an impressive memory by using physical objects from his environment to assist him in storing memory. Hundreds of years later, we do the same thing in a much more literal sense. I'd like to explore how we can intentionally use technology to expand and aide the human memory. Specifically, I'd like to research potential technologies to help dementia patients.

In the first chapter of From Pencils to Pixels, Dennis Baron explores this transition from ancient memory techniques to more advanced technologies, "from pencils to pixels" as he coins it. In the chapter, he argues that the technologies we have today are not as new as we think they are; they are simply "the latest step in a long line of writing technologies" (Baron 17). Even the pencil, he points out, was a new technology at one point. As a new technology, writing allowed communication to bridge time and space in ways it had never done before. The pencil became the telegraph, the telephone, and eventually the computer, and all of these inventions had pros and cons. Baron points out that even though Facebook or the latest iPhone may seem like a breach on our privacy, so did the telephone at one point. 

Though it's almost always difficult to embrace what's new, especially when a dependency on these new technologies could lead to the dissolution of a skill, it's important to remember that these new technologies can primarily serve as useful tools. People may have once feared that calculators would make students forget arithmetic or that spell-check would make them forget how to spell, but now teachers complain if students don't bring a calculator to class or forget to use spell-check.

I hope to show that even those these technologies may appear to make our memory worse, they could actually serve as useful tools to make our memory better, specifically in regard to Alzheimer's and Dementia patients. 

Finally, French philosopher Bernard Stiegler explores the impact these new technologies have on memory today in his chapter of Critical Terms for Media Studies, "Memory." He labels these developing technologies as "hypomnesis" which he defines as "recollection through externalized memory" (Stiegler 67). Everything "from pencils to pixels" falls under this umbrella. He explains that the impact of these exteriorizations is that losing the device on which the memory was stored is not only to lose the memory but also to realize that memory only existed in the apparatus itself, not in the mind.

Stiegler calls storing all of these memories in something outside the mind "Epiphylogenesis"--that is, human memory as something that functions "by means other than life" (Hansen 65). As human memories become more complex, we grow to rely on our own memories as much as we rely on these external devices.

Of course, this shift to external memory is not without risks. The companies that control these devices control untold amounts of valuable information as well as the way in which that information is delivered and shared. That gives way to a hierarchy of information; what is being covered or talked about right now is the most important. The relationship between life and media has shifted so that media seems "not only to anticipate but...to determine life itself" (Stiegler 81).

Finally, Stiegler concludes that memory and the transfer of information has shifted so that the act of "remembering" may now mean the act of searching something online or unlocking a phone. Unlocking that memory is now a new process. We now learn to access memories by learning that new process or skill.

This concept is the most interesting to me because I would like to explore the idea that those who have lost the ability to recall memories in the traditional sense may be able to recall memories in other ways. Specifically, there may be some sort of Hypomnesis technology that aides Alzheimer's and Dementia patients. Perhaps this new technology would function similar to Ricci's Memory Palace. Perhaps it would be something as simple as a pencil and a calendar. Or perhaps it will be a new technology yet to be developed. Whatever the specific technology happens to be, there is a space and a need for it in our society, and a history to legitimize its development and existence.

Works Cited

Baron, Dennis. "Chapter 1: The Stages of Literacy Technologies." From Pencils to Pixels. in Hawisher, Gail. Passions Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies, Ed. Cynthia L. Selfe, Utah State University Press, 1999. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/socal/detail.action?docID=3442856.

Hansen, Mark B. N. "Introduction to Chapter 5: Memory" Critical Terms for Media Studies. Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2010. 64-66. Print.

Spence, Jonathan D. “Chapter 9: Inside the Palace.” The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. Penguin Books, 1985, pp. 266–268.

Stiegler, Bernard. "Chapter 5: Memory." Critical Terms for Media Studies. Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2010. 66-87. Print.