Some number of years ago, Rich went to a talk. He remembers the subject; it impressed him. I remember him coming home and telling me all about the talk..
He doesn't, unfortunately, recall the name of the speaker, the date, the title of the talk, or the location. Also unfortunately, the topic doesn't Google well.**
Rich says:
A while back, I attended a talk which (IIRC) described genes, neurons,
tools, books, and programs as forms of memory. The speaker noted that
tools store information in a useful but not accessible form and that
books do the converse. Programs (ideally 🙂 do both.I haven't been successful in finding this in Google; might any of you
be familiar with the source of this notion?
I've started suggesting to Rich that he keep more records. At the least, sending email write-ups of interesting things can help preserve them in writing.
When I was in College and Grad School, I kept a regular journal. Sometime in 1983 or so, I stopped. I didn't keep a written record of much over the next 20 years except for a few long trips we took. Most of my records were in paper letters to my parents or, perhaps, in email. A catastrophic disk crash in 1997 lost everything I had kept in email before that time.
I sincerely wish, now, that I hadn't stopped keeping a journal during that period.
A couple of years ago, I started to keep a journal again. It's electronic this time (I type better than I handwrite; my hand cramps too easily). I could, perhaps, lose it all to a disk crash. Of course, I can also back it up in multiple copies 🙂
It's too bad neither of us was keeping records a few years ago when Rich went to that talk…
** actually, the topic Googles a bit too well. I've found many interesting and variously relevant articles. I simply don't find exactly what Rich seeks (and neither does Rich).
If you're trying a similar search, may I recommend the following:
- "The Nature Of Information", a philosophical essay by Bill Birdsall
- Memetic Evolution (Wikipedia entry)
- "Memory, Learning, and metacognition", by Pierre Jacob (PDF)
Slightly Off KIlter 