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Actual memories blur together with synthetic memories constructed from old photographs, and stories told by others. These days it's really easy to accumulate s
by MarkusWandel 1y ago
Actual memories blur together with synthetic memories constructed from old photographs, and stories told by others.
These days it's really easy to accumulate synthetic memory material in the form of thousands of photos and videos. My kids are covered that way. The hard part is still having access to them a generation later. At least the sparse material from back then survives as fading photographs in a physical album. Not so sure about the flood of material accumulating on people's phones these days. Mine lives on reliable backups but I figure once I'm gone all that digital data will bit rot like everyone else's.
As for "same person"? Of course not. Both body and mind change over time as you accumulate life experiences, both good and bad. It's a continuum of change. I'd have quite a bit of stuff to tell my 30 year ago self. Don't know if he would listen.
- XorNot 1y agoOne of the glass or diamond based storage technologies really needs to take off. What we're missing right now is something matching HDD/SSD in capacity but providing very long term endurance of the "it's been in a box in the attic for 50 years" type CD-R was thought of that way, but wasn't really stable in the long term at a usable price point.
- Wobbles42 1y agoEven in cases where the physical media survives, the issue remains of continued availability of working hardware to read the media. This might get better in the future though. We seem to be reaching the end of technology's exponential growth phase (famous last words, I know). Perhaps the pace of change will slow and standards will start lasting longer as a result.
- scyzoryk_xyz 1y agoI have a thought to share here: photography has changed. It’s not just that we don’t necessarily make photo albums the way we used to, but also that the actual choices we make when taking a photo and the way we behave when someone is taking our photo has shifted. These things tell stories that reinforce certain narratives. You think your kids are covered but how? When do take a photo? Which ones do you dump, which ones do you look at later? It’s a weird uncanny synthetic memory thing when OS AI sorts through photos as well. Anyways, I don’t think younger me would listen either.
- MarkusWandel 1y agoAbsolutely true, of course. You don't take pictures of the disasters, you take pictures of the stuff you feel good about, that you want to remember. This reinforces the existing "golden glow of nostalgia" tendency. But has that ever been different in photography? A mind game that I sometimes play: Think of a particularly pleasant "golden glow of nostalgia" memory (or set of photos), and then fill it in with surrounding detail. Not stuff that you remember exactly but context. The boring or even annoying stuff. What if that were recorded too? Why, then browsing around in old recordings would be no more interesting than leading one's current life. Nostalgia, whether in the mind or in recorded media, filters down to the "worth remembering" highlights for a reason.