Science and Technology

“Is Memory in the Brain?”

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 1 Comment

Most of us think of memory as something that goes on exclusively in our brains, but alongside of efforts to view cognition in general as an embodied and extended activity, some researchers have been arguing that memory also has a socially extended dimension.  David Manier is among those pushing our understanding of memory so as to encompass acts of social communication as remembering.

Manier’s 2004 article, “Is Memory in the Brain?  Remembering as Social Behavior,” published in Mind, Culture, and Activity seeks to establish social remembering as a legitimate and significant area of study for cognitive psychologists.  In order to this, Manier begins by challenging the dominant understanding of memory which construes memory as something located in the brain or as a faculty housed exclusively in the brain.

“Historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, often influenced by Halbwachs (1950/1980), have taken up the topic of collective memory, looking at ways that organizations preserve important aspects of the past, and ways that events of weighty historical importance (such as the Holocaust) become integrated into the collective identity of a group of people …. But among some psychologists, especially those whose emphasis is on neuroscientific approaches to memory, it is possible to detect a certain ambivalence toward this topic.” (251)

Manier intends to argue instead, “for the usefulness of conceptualizing remembering as social behavior, and for expanding the science of memory to include communicative acts.” (252)  Manier and his colleagues have conducted a number of studies into what he terms conversational remembering.  These studies take place in “naturalistic contexts,” that is everyday environments as opposed to the contrived laboratory environment in which most cognitive scientific research takes place.  Thus far, Manier’s studies suggest that the dynamics of social remembering shape the subsequent remembering of individual group members.

Manier briefly traces the history of the belief, most recently articulated by Tulving, that memory “has a home, even if still a hidden one, in the brain” back past recent neuroscientific discoveries to ancient Greece.  Plato operated with what Cropsey has termed an “obstetrical metaphor” according to which “the purpose of philosophy is to serve as a ‘midwife’ to the birth of ideas having germinal existence within the soul; in this sense, Plato saw knowing as involving an act of remembering.”  Thus memory was not conceived as mere storage of information, nor simply as a brain function, but “rather more like a journey, a quest in which conversations with a philosopher … can play a crucial role.”  (253)

According to Manier, this more conversational, dialogical, social conception of memory was displaced by Aristotle’s “emphasis on taxonomy” and his division of the soul into four faculties: the nutritive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the rational.  Memory, associated with imagination, was understood as a function of the sensory faculty through which one perceived images of things past.  While Aristotle did not maintain that what he had distinguished in theory was in fact distinguishable in reality, others who came after him where not so precise.  In Manier’s brief sketch, the notion of memory as a faculty located in the brain evolves through the Medieval heirs of Aristotle, to Locke, Thomas Reid, and then on to Gall and Spurzheim (founders of phrenology), Fechner, and Ebbinghaus.  (253-254)

Certain metaphors have also reinforced this “modular or topographical” view of memory:

“Often, the metaphors have been influenced by discussions of anatomy and physiology (… ‘the mental organ’ of language production – discussed by Chomsky …).  Moreover, the industrial revolution, with its production of heavy machinery, lent weight to an emphasis on metaphors about psychological ‘mechanisms.’  The development of computers spawned a host of new metaphors for cognitive psychology, including information processing, hardware and software, systems and subsystems, control processes, input and output, the computational architecture of mind, parallel distributed processing, …. (254)

Against the “mental topography” approach, Neisser has called for “ecological validity” which “asserts the imperative of understanding ‘everyday thinking’ rather than the study (preferred by many experimental psychologists) of how isolated individuals perform on contrived experiments conducted in carefully controlled laboratory settings.” (255)  Following Bruner, Manier goes on to characterize remembering as an “act of meaning” adding, “memory is something that we as humans do, that is, it is a meaningful action we perform in the sociocultural contexts that we take part in creating, and within which we live.”  Furthermore, “If it is correct to say that memory is something we do rather than something we have, it may be more appropriate to think of remembering as a kind of cognitive behavior ….” (256)

Now Manier articulates his chief claim, “remembering can be viewed as an act of communication.”  (257)  He aligns his claim with Gilbert Ryles’ earlier argument against the “tendency to view silent thoughts as somehow real thoughts, as opposed to the thoughts that we speak aloud.  By analogy, Manier suggests that not all remembering is silent remembering, and he offers the following definition:  “Remembering is a present communication of something past.”  He goes on to give various examples, all of which constitute acts of remembering:  solitary, private remembering; remembering in conversation with someone; and remembering through writing.  Each example was a remembrance of the same event, but each situation shifted what was remembered.  (258)

While some may argue that behind acts of remembrance there lays one’s “real memory” physically located in the brain, Manier suggests that the “neurophysiological configuration” is “only the material basis for real acts of remembering.”  Furthermore,

“This view of acts of remembering accords with the concept of distributed cognition, according to which we humans use the cultural tools that are available to us.  As Dennet, announced … we no more think with our brains than we hammer with our bare hands. And one of the important cultural tools we use in our thinking – and especially in our remembering – is group conversation.” (260)

Manier then provides a transcription of a family group conversation to illustrate how memories shift through the give and take of conversation, memories that presumably would not have been altered otherwise.  He concludes,

“Remembering is not only shaped by internal, cognitive processes.  When we reconstruct past events in the context of conversation, the conversational roles that are adopted by group members will affect what is remembered.  Moreover, conversational remembering can be shaped by other influences.  These influences on remembering – as well as a host of other sociocultural facts – tend to be missed by an approach that limits itself to what goes on in the brain.”

Manier, David.  “Is Memory in the Brain? Remembering as Social Behavior” in Mind, Culture, and Activity, 11(4), 251-266.  2004.

No, I Don’t Want To Be A Medieval Peasant

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

Admittedly, most days I tend toward critique, not praise of digital media and technology.  Aware of my proclivity, I try to compensate and hope that I strike a reasonable balance.  I’m sure everyone thinks they are successful in their efforts to achieve balanced views, so I’m probably the last person to judge how well I do or don’t.  That said, I do get into a fair number of discussions about technology in a variety of settings, and, more often than not, I’m raising certain questions and concerns, urging for discernment, moderation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera … (The last bit best read in Yule Brenner tones.)  What this usually is taken to mean, judging from typical responses, is that I would like to be Amish, live without electricity, farm my own food, and wear black homespun clothes in the heat of the summer sun.   Okay, so maybe, there is a tiny part of me that wouldn’t mind trying that out for awhile, but generally speaking this actually isn’t my goal, and much less, the point.

What the reaction reveals, however, is that we tend to think in binary oppositions — this or that, either/or — and that the binary opposite of contemporary technology, in many people’s minds, is some past technological state, for some reason often associated with the 19th century religious sectarianism or Medieval Europe.  So it seems that on the assumption of this binary opposition, any critique of present technology necessarily groups you with either the Amish or the “bring out your dead” crowd.  In fact, there is a good deal of wisdom residing in the past and in intentional communities, but this is beside the more narrow point I’d like to make here.

Binary oppositions are often inherently unstable or else false dilemmas.  But even if we were to set up a binary opposition with present day technology being one member of the pair, who says that some past technological state must be the other member?  We could just as easily imagine the other member being some ideal future state.  I don’t mean this is in some strong utopian sense.  The idealized future is  more dangerous than the idealized past.  However, most of us have certain ideas about what a marginally better world might look like, even if only on the very limited scale of our own personal lives.   So why not make this desire for a better way, which at its best is informed by the past, the other of the present ecology of technology?  In this light, we might consider reasonable critiques of our technologies not as interventions in favor of an unrecoverable past, but rather as steps toward a better, attainable future.

It may be worth remembering that one very famous critic of technology, Marshall McLuhan, believed  that, “There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening” (The Medium is the Massage).  Sometimes, however, it is precisely the contemplation part that we struggle with.  Perhaps because in technology, as in politics, binary oppositions tend to undermine, rather than encourage, thought.

Mark Zuckerberg, Moral Philosopher of Identity

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 1 Comment

In a recent blog post, Steve Cheney bemoans the ongoing progress that Facebook is making toward becoming the ambient background of the Internet.  Specifically, he is concerned that Facebook is killing your authenticity:

… now Facebook’s sheer scale is pushing it in a new direction, one that encroaches on your authenticity.

Facebook is no longer a social network. They stopped being one long before the movie. Facebook is really a huge broadcast platform. Everything that happens between its walls is one degree away from being public, one massive auditorium filled with everyone you’ve ever met, most of whom you haven’t seen or spoken to in years.

Cheney’s post was triggered by the recent adoption of Facebook commenting by a number of large websites, a move that builds on the earlier integration of the “Like” button into almost every commercial, news, and entertainment site of note as part of Facebook’s “Open Graph” platform.  The trajectory here seems fairly clear.  Facebook is forging a global internet identity for you, one that it owns, of course, and with which it stands to make a fair bit of money.

Helpfully, Cheney did not frame his complaint within a denial of the basically social nature of human beings along the lines suggested by Andrew Keen not too long ago.  On the contrary, Cheney acknowledges our social impulses and is concerned that one singular online identity will not do justice to the complexity of human personality and truly social interaction.  One indiscriminate identity will result in one inauthentic and shallow identity that will inhibit rather than promote meaningful sociability.

“A George divided against itself cannot stand!”

The George in question is, of course, the character of George Costanza on Seinfeld.  In one of the more memorable exchanges from the remarkably memorable series, George explains what would happen if Relationship George were to come into contact with Independent George – Independent George would be no more.  We can relate to George in this situation because most of us maintain a handful of different personas that we cycle through as we navigate our way through life.  There are elements of our personality we reveal in some settings that we do not disclose in others; we present some aspects of our selves to certain people and not to others.  When for some reason these roles come into contact with one another it is possible that a little tension and confusion may ensue.  No news here.

In the early days of the Internet, when a kind of felicitous anarchy seemed to reign, it was fashionable to view the anonymity of the web as a playhouse of identity.  Individuals were able to try on and experiment with all sorts of identities — for better or for ill —  with relative safety and little worry of being found out.  It would have been unthinkable that one single and fully transparent identity would mark us across our Internet experience.

But that is exactly the trajectory we have been on for the last several years and this increases the odds of our many worlds colliding occasionally leading us to experience the kind of existential crisis that George’s histrionics embodied.  When our worlds collide, we too begin to sense that we might be losing our independent self, or the ability to control what people see and hear of us, control of what we might call our public identities.  We have a more difficult time calibrating our public personas to fit specific audiences and tasks.

Take for example the awkwardness and angst that arose when parents began joining Facebook and attempted to “friend” their children.  A Washington Post story on the topic from September 2008 cited protest groups formed in response with less than subtle names such as “What Happens in College Stays in College: Keep Parents Off Facebook!”  The author noted that it might seem odd that a “generation accustomed to sharing everything online” and with little or no apparent awareness of the distinction between private and public becomes apoplectic when merely two more people gain access to their already remarkably public personas.  But this misses the point.  What was at stake, of course, was control over who knew what.  The students experienced exactly what George did – their worlds collided and their anxiety reflected the increasing difficulty of controlling their public identity.

The ubiquity of one dominant social media platform makes it harder to exercise effective control over the presentation of our identities.  Mark Zuckerberg, moral philosopher that he is, rather conveniently believes,

You have one identity… The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.

Facebook’s near monopoly on social networking has reigned in the proliferation of profiles and, if fact, studies suggest that a Facebook profile tracks fairly closely to the truth about a person.  But there is still the question of who sees that more or less truthful public approximation of our personality and how much they see.  Furthermore, should Facebook, or any social media site be in the business of compelling people to live with integrity, particularly while profiting from the enforcement of this integrity?  More importantly, is it really integrity that is being forced upon us?  Or, to put it another way, does the maintenance of various personas necessarily entail a morally problematic lack of integrity? Is duplicity the only reason why we would withhold some aspect of our personality in certain circumstances?

Authentic and meaningful relationships typically depend upon the natural evolution of interpersonal trust and confidence.  Demanding immediate and equal transparency across the board works against the natural progression of social interaction.  Pace Mr. Zuckerberg, there are good reasons why we don’t reveal ourselves in equal measure to everyone and in all circumstances that have nothing to do with a lack of integrity.

Information Overload and the Possibilities of Digital Asceticism

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

Sharon Begley’s Newsweek piece, “I Can’t Think,” tackles the problem of information overload with the help of some recent neurological studies.  Perhaps not surprisingly, “With too much information, ” according to one researcher, “people’s decisions make less and less sense.”  Most of us are all too familiar with the mounting sense of indecision and even anxiety the more information we collect regarding an important decision, so this won’t come as too much of a surprise.  Here is one interesting note, however, analogous to the observations noted a couple of days ago about memory and creativity:

“If you let things come at you all the time, you can’t use additional information to make a creative leap or a wise judgment,” says Cantor. “You need to pull back from the constant influx and take a break.” That allows the brain to subconsciously integrate new information with existing knowledge and thereby make novel connections and see hidden patterns. In contrast, a constant focus on the new makes it harder for information to percolate just below conscious awareness, where it can combine in ways that spark smart decisions.

On the same topic, Nicholas Carr has offered a helpful distinction in a recent blog post.  The problem with information used to be not having enough of it and designing good filters to find the relevant stuff.  This is no longer the issue.

Situational overload is the needle-in-the-haystack problem: You need a particular piece of information – in order to answer a question of one sort or another – and that piece of information is buried in a bunch of other pieces of information. The challenge is to pinpoint the required information, to extract the needle from the haystack, and to do it as quickly as possible. Filters have always been pretty effective at solving the problem of situational overload …

Situational overload is not the problem. When we complain about information overload, what we’re usually complaining about is ambient overload. This is an altogether different beast. Ambient overload doesn’t involve needles in haystacks. It involves haystack-sized piles of needles. We experience ambient overload when we’re surrounded by so much information that is of immediate interest to us that we feel overwhelmed by the never ending pressure of trying to keep up with it all.

As is often noted, given the choice between the problems attending information scarcity and those attending information over-abundance, better to opt for the latter.  It may ultimately be difficult to argue with this point.  But problems are problems and so we feel their force and long for solutions.  Given that this is Ash Wednesday, one is tempted to suggest that perhaps what is needed are new personal practices of digital asceticism informed by our (evolving) understanding of the conditions under which the human mind and body best function and flourish.  These are some of the possible choices that may inform such a set of practices, at least as they come to my mind:

  • Intentionally aim for the temperate use of digital media
  • Allow for periods of silence
  • Seek digitally unmediated interactions with others
  • Accept that we cannot keep up with all of it
  • Acknowledge the goodness of certain limitations associated with embodiment
  • Practice separation from devices that make you anxious by their absence

More suggestions welcome.

‘We mustn’t take people for fools’: de Certeau on Reading as Resistance

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 2 Comments

In The Practice of Everyday Life, French theorist and sometime Jesuit, Michel de Certeau presents an account of individual agency which seeks to nuance Foucault’s exposition of the disciplinary society.  Where certain historical and sociological narratives are inclined to see only passive consumers at the mercy of structural forces, de Certeau wants us to see active users who “make innumerable and infinitesimal transformations of and within the dominant cultural  economy in order to adapt it to their own interests and their own rules” (xiv).  Without denying the existence and significance of “disciplinary technology” and the “microphysics of power,” he also wants to

bring to light the clandestine forms taken by the dispersed, tactical, and make-shift creativity of groups or individuals already caught in the nets of ‘discipline.’  Pushed to their ideal limits, these procedures and ruses of consumers compose the network of an antidiscipline …” (xiv-xv).

Among the anti-disciplinary practices analyzed by de Certeau, we may be surprised to find reading.  And reading is of particular significance as a practice because,

From TV to newspapers, from advertising to all sorts of mercantile epiphanies, our society is characterized by a cancerous growth of vision, measuring everything by its ability to show or be shown and transmuting communication into a visual journey.  It is a sort of epic of the eye and of the impulse to read (xxi).

Bear in mind that de Certeau is writing in the early 1980’s, well before the advent of digital technologies we now take for granted which have only accelerated and accentuated (certain forms of) reading and the visual.  Given his eclectic account of what constitutes reading, however, de Certeau’s analysis is well-positioned to retain its relevance.

Reading, in the very broad sense employed by de Certeau, may appear to be in its very nature a quintessentially  passive activity, a kind of thoughtless consumption.  This could not be further from the truth:

In reality, the activity of reading has on the contrary all the characteristics of a silent production:  the drift across the page, the metamorphosis of the text effected by the wandering eyes of the reader, the improvisation and expectation of meanings inferred from a few words, leaps over written spaces in an ephemeral dance.  [The reader] insinuates into another person’s text the ruses of pleasure and appropriation; he poaches on it, is transported into it, pluralizes himself in it like the internal rumblings of one’s body.  (xxi)

The movement of the reader’s world into the author’s place “makes the text habitable, like a rented apartment.  It transforms another person’s property into a space borrowed for a moment by a transient” (xxi).  Later in the book, de Certeau returns to this theme of reading (consumption) as transience, especially in contrast to writing (production):

Far from being writers – founders of their own place, heirs of the peasants of earlier ages now working on the soil of language, diggers of wells and builders of houses – readers are travelers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves …. Reading takes no measures against the erosion of time (one forgets oneself and also forgets), it does not keep what it acquires, or it does so poorly, and each of the places through which it passes is a repetition of the lost paradise.

Indeed, reading has no place:  Barthes reads Proust in Stendhal’s text …. [The reader’s] place is not here or there, one or the other, but neither the one nor the other, simultaneously inside and outside, dissolving both by mixing them together, associating texts like funerary statues that he awakens and hosts, but never owns.  In that way, he also escapes from the law of each text in particular, and from that of the social milieu. (174)

The placelessness of reading and the tactics it evokes from the reader, if I understand de Certeau, free the reader from the law-like dominance of any one text and, by extension, society itself, which can be read as a book.  In the Middle Ages, de Certeau notes early on, the text was a book, today it is a “whole society made into a book” (xxii).  Later on he adds, “This text was formerly found at school.  Today, the text is society itself.  It takes urbanistic, industrial, commercial, or televised forms” (167).

The tactics of reading become the strategies of non-conformity.  The consumer is not merely a passive recipient, she is an active user that evades the pressures of conformity, even if subtly and evasively.  This analysis elides nicely with the conditions of the digital age, but should now be updated to account for the vast democratization of the means of writing/production that digital technologies and the Internet have enabled.  What happens to the strategies of resistance developed and deployed under the conditions of the mass market when we enter into the diversified field of digital media?  Do the implicit and tacit tactics become explicitly instantiated under the new conditions?  Does the underground and invisible now turn into the mainstream and visible?  Did the silent tactics of reading guide the evolution of digital practices?

And one last word, for now, from de Certeau.  In debates about the consequences of the Internet, it may be too often assumed that users are merely passive pawns at the disposal of massive and often invisible forces, whether of the medium itself or the commercial powers that profit from the medium. As he counseled his contemporaries, de Certeau may have counseled us:

… it is always good to remind ourselves that we mustn’t take people for fools (176).