3 ms·

Well my counter thoughts are that the difference in look up speed is big enough to make a distinction. If I read information from an encyclopedia I would be mu

Well my counter thoughts are that the difference in look up speed is big enough to make a distinction. If I read information from an encyclopedia I would be much more inclined to try remember it at the point in time. Whereas it's habitual for me to now just skim over information on the internet and store the reference point to it instead. Edit: Effectively instead of filling my memory with facts I store it with pointers to facts. Which makes it harder to put two and two together.

Liu 15y ago
Perhaps we are contentiously making that tradeoff, with today's amount of knowledge you do not have time to deeply learn it all, so you instead just skim learn and store pointers for future times you might actually need it.
brudgers 15y ago
>"instead of filling my memory with facts I store it with pointers to facts" [To push the analogy further] Unlike the managed memory model of the Encyclopedia, one of the problems with the internet as memory is that memory addresses are so frequently overwritten and the entire system is essentially non-redundant. This is to say that, unlike books web pages tend to change of disappear after publication breaking links and each web page is - for the vast majority of practical purposes - a unique individual manuscript rather than the product of a printing press. This makes the internet as memory suffer from amnesia as pages are rewritten, overwritten, and discarded in a matter of months even at relatively stable websites and this tendency toward frequent revision encourages a lower level of investment in the depth of data provided on the web. As a case in point, I recently found a genealogical link from 2004 which pointed to the contents of a specific box in an archive in New Jersey that contained a photograph of my great great grandfather while he was serving in Company B of the 95th Ohio Volunteers during the American Civil War. Now the page returns 404, and the search function of the archive website does not hit on my ancestor's name at all - the detailed information which was accessible from the web did not survive the intervening updates of the website. Of course my personal example hardly touches the scale at which the internet suffers from amnesia - even the deletion of Geocities is probably a tiny fraction of the information which the internet forgets at what feels like an ever increasing pace. And given the ephemeral nature of the internet's indices - it doesn't even make sense to talk of remembering a Google or Bing search page given that it is specifically constructed for a unique time, place, and consumer. If the internet is memory, then the search engines are oft-demonic homuncului who provide access.
- swombat 15y ago
  I'll conclude by asking: How is that different from the way your own brain stores memory? Do you really think your brain is like a hard drive, storing permanently without rewriters, amnesia and other dysfunctions? I suspect the two are rather similar...
  - brudgers 15y ago
    My brain has redundant pathways to memories and almost certainly stores memories in multiple locations. However, the primary comparison was not to brains but to encyclopedias or books (in keeping with ancestor comments) specifically and other technological artifacts in general. And therefore, books are more akin to the permanent storage devices such as disks you mention (though tending to be far more persistent). Generally speaking, It is my belief that computers are not significantly more isomorphic with brains than windmills and any conclusion that there are homuncului should be taken as a reductio ad absurdum against an isomorphism between brains and the internet.

Liu 15y ago

Perhaps we are contentiously making that tradeoff, with today's amount of knowledge you do not have time to deeply learn it all, so you instead just skim learn and store pointers for future times you might actually need it.

brudgers 15y ago

>"instead of filling my memory with facts I store it with pointers to facts" [To push the analogy further] Unlike the managed memory model of the Encyclopedia, one of the problems with the internet as memory is that memory addresses are so frequently overwritten and the entire system is essentially non-redundant. This is to say that, unlike books web pages tend to change of disappear after publication breaking links and each web page is - for the vast majority of practical purposes - a unique individual manuscript rather than the product of a printing press. This makes the internet as memory suffer from amnesia as pages are rewritten, overwritten, and discarded in a matter of months even at relatively stable websites and this tendency toward frequent revision encourages a lower level of investment in the depth of data provided on the web. As a case in point, I recently found a genealogical link from 2004 which pointed to the contents of a specific box in an archive in New Jersey that contained a photograph of my great great grandfather while he was serving in Company B of the 95th Ohio Volunteers during the American Civil War. Now the page returns 404, and the search function of the archive website does not hit on my ancestor's name at all - the detailed information which was accessible from the web did not survive the intervening updates of the website. Of course my personal example hardly touches the scale at which the internet suffers from amnesia - even the deletion of Geocities is probably a tiny fraction of the information which the internet forgets at what feels like an ever increasing pace. And given the ephemeral nature of the internet's indices - it doesn't even make sense to talk of remembering a Google or Bing search page given that it is specifically constructed for a unique time, place, and consumer. If the internet is memory, then the search engines are oft-demonic homuncului who provide access.

swombat 15y ago
I'll conclude by asking: How is that different from the way your own brain stores memory? Do you really think your brain is like a hard drive, storing permanently without rewriters, amnesia and other dysfunctions? I suspect the two are rather similar...
- brudgers 15y ago
  My brain has redundant pathways to memories and almost certainly stores memories in multiple locations. However, the primary comparison was not to brains but to encyclopedias or books (in keeping with ancestor comments) specifically and other technological artifacts in general. And therefore, books are more akin to the permanent storage devices such as disks you mention (though tending to be far more persistent). Generally speaking, It is my belief that computers are not significantly more isomorphic with brains than windmills and any conclusion that there are homuncului should be taken as a reductio ad absurdum against an isomorphism between brains and the internet.