Some recollect with aplomb
Their visual memory, a balm
The triumph of reading
May be misleading
Nous n'oublions pas Notre-Dame
The reading for this week, on metamemory and memory theory, naturally makes one start to consider how they formulate their own memories. The system of developing memory loci makes a great deal of sense once one considers one’s own relationship with locations and associated memories. When in a location, it is easy to immediately invoke strong memories associated with the place that can be shockingly detailed. Visual memory is one of our most powerful tools (though I would personally argue that scent memory is the most evocative of experience, though far more difficult to imagine and deliberately construct) for structured and deliberate recollection. The implications of this as people moved from an oral tradition to a written tradition are outlined in “The Art of Memory”.
One of the questions related to this, and covered to a degree by Hugo is what happens when print becomes ubiquitous? As communication technology improves, people are able to spend less and less mental energy on the act of memory, and they foist the responsibility of storing data onto external sources. This has its good points (mass accessibility) as well as its bad points (reduced mental discipline, reliance on ephemeral objects) and this discussion continues in earnest with the birth of each new technology.
One thing that struck me about this reading, referenced by the authors only obliquely, is the astonishing capacity of the brain to generate and retain detailed visual imagery. Despite generations of people adapting to the written word, our most potent tools of recollection are visual. When calling to mind a scene in a book, attentive readers do not summon images of the words on the page, but representative images of what is described. Who among us read the Hugo, considering the power of architecture and writing, and did not immediately picture a building of sweeping majesty (and likely personal resonance)? Can architecture be destroyed by writing? Never while people continue to imagine buildings.
Despite claims that surface with every major communications development that the new tool will displace the old completely, it almost never happens. One recalls (not really; I wasn't born yet, but you know what I mean) concerns that the television would supplant the radio completely. Not so. BUT, if we take Hugo's character to mean that the one will become the primary purveyor of a culture's most important knowledge, it does happen...but not very often. So I guess we can wonder about that now; do you think the printed word will be supplanted by, say, visual records? Something else?
ReplyDeleteWithout further concrete research, I cannot substantiate this statement beyond personal feeling, but I doubt it. People appeal to different parts of their nature with written, auditory, visual and tactile media. Audiobooks make a small percentage of available media, as do, say, narrated film or adaptations. And yet, we still build buildings for form as well as function. I think that the primary purveyor of knowledge will split into multiple purveyors of knowledge. And then we get into the messy questions about what sort of delivery system is the internet? Visual? Tactile? Written? Auditory? All of the above?
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to think of any media that have been developed and have become completely obsolete, and none are coming to mind. Certainly, the means of production and distribution of material within a given medium have evolved over time, but I'm not sure that media ever cease to be used entirely, although they go in and out of popularity or become relegated to specific uses. I think the suggestion that one medium can completely supplant another is rooted in the specious assumption that media only function as avenues that allow for the transmission of information. The major flaws I see in this thinking are that it overlooks the aesthetic and experiential sides of communication, and it ignores the fact that people are drawn to different media both when producing information (or art!) and for receiving it.
ReplyDeleteMedia do not communicate information uniformly, and what is being communicated is not merely discursive but also experiential. A novel, a play and a film can be nearly identical in narrative, but the experience of the reader or viewer will be vastly different. These media not only vary in the sensory experiences they trigger in the reader or viewer, but they also function extremely differently temporally. While a narrative with its own chronology can be expressed in each of these three media, someone reading a book has the flexibility to return to previous sections and reinterpret them through the lens of the entire story, whereas a theatre patron does not. Much more vast is the difference between these media and architecture, which if it communicates anything (discursively) does not do it with the same type of chronology that is inherent to film or theatre or a novel.
Not only do I think media will remain in use because they communicate information in accordance with their own fortes, but I find it hard to believe that artists will all decide to discontinue working in the particular media in which they are trained or are drawn to just because a more efficient form of communication is developed. Certainly, people will choose to use new media out of sheer interest or for efficiency or because something can be communicated or experienced in a new way. Nevertheless I think that that this will result in a proliferation of media that are more finely attuned to their unique strengths than in a series of one mode of communication repeatedly supplanting the last.
Wait, I just thought of one: the telegraph. But maybe it's the exception.
ReplyDeleteNow that is an interesting point. But that starts to get into questions not just of technological advancement, but intention. The telegraph was successfully replaced by the telephone as a more effective way of communicating impermanent messages long distances. Books have a different intention than telephones-- they're a permanent record. The internet has succeeded in blending these two achievements-- instant dissemination of information (as well as targeted messaging) with permanent record keeping. The intention of the telegraph was maintained and did not become obsolete- it was just replaced by a more efficient form of doing its identical job.
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