The Remembered Past vs. The Real Past

Old songs, like old memories, are the purveyors of a kind of double imagery. Triggers of thought that somehow short circuit time and make yesterday's events today's reality. So when we write or read about the past, particularly in novels or memoirs, what we are reading, or writing, is not necessarily factual, but represents our remembered past..almost a separate world unto itself.

Award winning novelist Siri Hustvedt looks at this in her latest novel, Memories of the Future

My conversation with Siri Hustvedt:

How Digital Memory May Change What Makes Us Human

Back in 320 BC Socrates worried about how written language would impact our ability to remember. This was long, long before moveable type, the computer, the pda or any form of digital technology.

Socrates worried that reliance on simply writing would erode memory. But also and maybe more importantly, that reading would mislead students to think that they had knowledge, when they only had data.

Today, similar debates are going on with respect to the digital world. Leading a great deal of this discussion and giving us much insight is Abby Smith Rumsey in her book When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future

My conversation with Abby Smith Rumsey:

You must remember this.....

In 1953, 27-year-old Henry Molaison underwent an experimental brain surgery in an attempt to alleviate his severe epileptic seizures. The surgery left him with a form of amnesia; he could remember many things from the past, but was unable to form any new memories.

He would become one of the most studies patients in history. Suzanne Corkin worked with and studied Molaison for almost 50 years, until his death in 2008. She writes about how his case has helped scientists understand how memories are processed and stored in her new book Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H. M.

My conversation with Suzanne Corkin: