In Charles Baxter's essay, "Shame and Forgetting in the Information Age", he took us through a series of content about information and how shame and forgetting plays within it. He started with this brother Tom, who remembered everything but couldn't process information and ended his essay with him. Baxter's purpose of this essay is to show us the importances of memory, not just any memory but our own. Surrounded by technology and relying on information as our own memory, it reduces and limits our own personal memory, experience. Over time, we can forget our own personal memory, experience in place of new information. Which will take away our purpose of life, which is to live and experience it. It is like we are turning into computers ourselves. By relying on information as our memory, we must be careful when we use it, otherwise it can lead to shame, and will follow by more forgetting. But forgetting is not always a bad thing, when we are dealing with our own memory, experience. We can choose to forget the things in our past that could be traumatize to our present live and hope that it will helps us live a normal life. Information itself is not everything there is to life, most of it is trash, but it does offer us something to live by. But most importantly, we must learn to value our own memory, experience and not let information alter it.
Quotes
"He was always giving something away...but it was also a request; please remember me; after all, I remember you." p. 143
"Your memory, can now in casual conversation refer to your computer's memory rather than your own." p. 145
"Remembering data and remembering an experience are two very different activities. It is possible that the quantity of data we are supposed to remember has reduced our capacity to remember or even to have experiences." p. 146
"In the information age, forgetfulness is a sign of debility and incompetence." p. 147
"Against a shame that you cannot bear, your mind detaches itself from its own memory and sails off in the direction of a psychic Lake-of-the-Woods." p. 157
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Charles Baxter's essay
From reading Baxter's essay for the first time, I think what he is trying to say is that in the information age, people tend to rely on information and not on what they know inside. Most of the time its all about memorizing the the information when we needed it, for example a presentation or a speech. If we forget the information that we are to present, we become shameful, and when we are done with it we simply delete out of our memory.
By relying on information as memory, we tend not to keep them for ourself, or experience them first hand and with more and more information, our chance of experiencing something decreases. When we delete information, it becomes a form of garbage because we no longer cares for it or even bother to store it in our own memory, like how Neil stated in the epigraph, " We have transformed information into a form of garbage." (Neil postman, p. 141) Like Baxter's brother Tom, when they went to his house to see if he had a will, they found nothing but information all over the place, information to Tom was purely garbage, since he wasn't able to process it. But what he had was his ability to remember, and that was what kept him going.
Forgetting is something that everyone who relys or information will eventually do and it can be shameful when it is something important. But forgetting can also be good, if we were to forget about bad experience from the past which interfer with our present live. But it is what we still remember and have stored in our own memory is what really counts.
Eventually, with time, information will interfer with the way we remember our past experience, but what we remember up till now and what we decide to forget is more than all the information in the world.
By relying on information as memory, we tend not to keep them for ourself, or experience them first hand and with more and more information, our chance of experiencing something decreases. When we delete information, it becomes a form of garbage because we no longer cares for it or even bother to store it in our own memory, like how Neil stated in the epigraph, " We have transformed information into a form of garbage." (Neil postman, p. 141) Like Baxter's brother Tom, when they went to his house to see if he had a will, they found nothing but information all over the place, information to Tom was purely garbage, since he wasn't able to process it. But what he had was his ability to remember, and that was what kept him going.
Forgetting is something that everyone who relys or information will eventually do and it can be shameful when it is something important. But forgetting can also be good, if we were to forget about bad experience from the past which interfer with our present live. But it is what we still remember and have stored in our own memory is what really counts.
Eventually, with time, information will interfer with the way we remember our past experience, but what we remember up till now and what we decide to forget is more than all the information in the world.
About me
Hi everyone, my name is chai her. I am 24 now and going for nursing. I live in milwaukee for about 7 years now and I work part time at Menards. When I am not at work or school, I enjoy listening to music and play video games. Sometimes I find myself on the internet doing nothing when I am bored. I have a yorkie named Roxas and a tank full for fishes. I am very excited to be a Dad this year and hopefully everything goes well. Beside that I would love to complete this course this summer!
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