2. Overview
Sigmund Freud developed an understanding of how
we store and access ‘memories’, by use of the children's
toy ‘mystic writing pad’. What was he saying?
Jacques Derrida on archiving: what does that mean for
us?
Murphie& Potts ‘Technology, thought and
consciousness’ and the implications of a
autonomous, thinking machine.
A general focus on memory, language and technology.
3. The Mystic Writing Pad
Sigmund Freud uses the child’s toy to explain what memory
is, and how it is used. Consider your own memories. How
do you remember them?
Memory is subject to other memories, meaning that the
original memory is never really ‘real’, it can only be
interpreted.
Memories are also subject to different experiences at
different time, and not always linear. If you try to recall a
good time had 10 years ago, you can only recall small
facts, but recalling the exact time and exact situations
would be hard. This is because the interval time between
then and now has been filled in with new memories.
4. What is memory if it isn’t ‘real’?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgBViHeiSKM
5. Archiving memories
Think about how you retrieve memory. How do you do it?
By emotion? Smell? Touch? Taste? What stimuli is used to
retrieve that memory.
Technology has the capacity for endless amounts of
memory: from Megabyte to Gigabyte to Terabyte.
Archiving memories for human beings is subject to many
different experiences from the formation of a memory to its
retrieval. In other words, the original versions are not really
‘original’ by the time that they are retrieved.
Computers are a good example: they compact and store
millions of bits of data, but they do not think, they process.
6. What happens when the computer
can think for itself?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqS83f-NUww
7. Murphie & Potts
Deep questions to consider, such as
Will computers become universal machines?
How artificial is intelligence? Is our own intelligence
artificial by the evolution of language and symbols?
Technology affects thought, and we affect technology
by creating it. Impending hybridism?
What happens to the self?
8. What does this mean for
technocultures?
Memories define how we make and create technology.
Are we looking at it in the right way?
What technologies do we consider in this context?
Do we look for the beginnings of autonomous thought
in computers, creating a thinking, emoting computer?
Or is this all just another memory?
9. References
Derrida, Jacques (1996) Archive fever:
a Freudian impression, trans. Eric
Prenowitz ,Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, pp.7-23.
Freud, Sigmund (1971) ‘A note upon
the mystic writing pad’ in The
complete psychological works of
Sigmund Freud, Vol. 19, Trans. J.
Strachey, London: The Hogarth
Press, pp. 226-232.
Murphie, Andrew & Potts, John
(2003) ‘Technology, thought and
consciousness’ in Culture and
Technology, New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp.142-168.
