A repeat "Scientific American Frontiers" segment on memory appears to have been initially produced in 2004.
I don't recall having seen the episode before, despite the fact that public broadcasting has a remarkable number of repeats.
Of course some of the programs are so content rich that one can learn something new even after multiple viewings.
The multiple viewings don't explain why I have such a hard time remembering people's names, or why words escape me in the middle of a sentence when speaking.
Memory is so tricky.
"Speak Memory" is the English title of a noted work by Vladimir Nabokov; Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" is monumental.
Local resident oral history interviews are a key component of the Wessels Living History Farm web site. "Reminisce" magazine is entirely nostalgic memories. So are most collector type hobbies.
The brave new online world is a grand experiment.
The collective enterprise of libraries and archives is the "collective memory" of society during the dominance of print as a mode of transmitting ideas. Forgotten folks and ideas can be resurrected so long as the photos, diaries, letters, papers, etc. can be recovered. Abraham Lincoln scholars are still ferreting out new facts about people and events of the 1850s and 1860s.
Time will tell if "the cloud" can regurgitate 50 and 100 year old ideas from obscurity as well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment