AM - artificial memory

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Lots of talk lately about AI, artificial intelligence. But I’ve been reading about AM, artificial memory.

This is artificial memory: writing. Well, technically, writing on paper is artificial memory, at least that’s what I’m gathering from the book Paper: Paging Through History written by journalist Mark Kurlansky (W.W. Norton, 2016).

It’s the history of the evolution of physical writing surfaces (think clay tablets, parchment, papyrus, etc.).

It’s also a history of the development of what we record (think drawings, alphabets, Roman numerals, numbers, etc.) and the utensils used (think quills, brushes, pens, pencils).

And it’s the history of writing technique, of writing right to left, left to right, left then right then left, and vertically (think bamboo strips).

In sum, it’s about “artificial memory,” that is, the rise of the written word — and we have Plato to thank for the term: the philosopher expressed regret over the “new technology” replacing orality. Was written language making people less human, even mechanical? Won’t we stop exercising our memories? Will reliance on the written word even destroy our ability to memorize?

According to Kurlansky, Plato believed that knowledge was something accessed through memory. Tellingly, he called writing “artificial memory.” Plato wrote, “Once a thing is put in writing, the composition, whatever it may be, drifts all over the place, getting not only in the hands of those who understand it, but also in those who have no business with it. It doesn’t know how to address the right people and not address the wrong.” This may explain why he never wrote down what he considered his best ideas, his so-called unwritten doctrines, and why so much of his writing is in dialogue form.

I understand the import of exercising our memory and remain in awe of the age of orality when the only way to know the Psalms was to memorize them. But it kind of reminds me of the first time I read Augustine’s Confessions and thinking it would have been great to have lived in the fourth or fifth century — but then I realized I like indoor plumbing. And I like paper. Long live artificial memory!