Memory and Imagination

Memory and Imagination August 12, 2016

In her study of digital memory (When We Are No More), Abby Smith Rumsey distinguishes between data storage and memory. What makes memory important is not simply its capacity to store fact: Rather, “it is the ability for information to be useful both now and in the future that counts” (12).

If memory fails, then “we fail to build the vital repertoire of knowledge and experience that may be of use to us in the future. And it is the future that is at stake. For memory is not about the past. It is about the future” (12).

Rumsey elaborates: “Human memory is unique because from the information stored in our brains we can summon not only things that did or do exist, but also things that might exist. From the contents of our past we can generate visions of the future. We know there is a past, a present, and a future, and in our heads we travel freely among these time zones. We know that generations of people were born and died before we came into existence, and that we, too, are destined to die. This deep temporal depth perception is unique in Nature. We engage in mental time travel, imagining possible future outcomes, or travel backward in time to re-create how something in the present came to be this way and not that. The richer our memories, the greater our imaginative capacities. And our destiny as problem solvers lies in this conjectural thinking” (12).


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