Making stuff as a founder of Avocado. Former music-maker. Tuna melt advocate. Started Google Reader. (But smarter people made it great.)

My dumb memory. What is is that we access when we remember things?
Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, Sept. 2001.
Ten-e-brae fac-tae sunt... dum cru-CI-fi-XIS-sent Jesum, Judaei et circa horam nonam

If I concentrate I can remember all of the lyrics to certain songs. That particular choral piece is always easy to retrieve. I haven't heard that in years.

What is it that we access when we remember things? Is memory some electro-chemical store that we search by some query?

Seems too robust. A store could be replicated, could be kept intact perfectly. Doesn't seem to work that way for anyone. Instead, perhaps memory is a fragmented buffer that we keep filling? Perhaps when we forget something all that's occurring is a buffer overflow that discards fragments of memory, (i.e. the color of a glove, the lyric to a song, the name of a teacher.)

I don't like it. Shouldn't evolution reward those who have a more completely recalled body of mistakes from which to learn?

My dumb memory. It seems too important to be this fragile.

Posted at September 6, 2001 02:47 PM
Main | massless.org continued... >>
"Building mini news-portals are fun. Releasing libraries to help other people build them is even more fun. What? Does that make me a dork?"