Hybrid Memory, Cognitive Technology and Self

Hybrid Memory, Cognitive Technology and Self Robert. W. Clowes1 Abstract. 1Recent years have seen an explosion in the strong position on whether cognitive technologies extend our production and use of technologies that allow us to record, store minds [2, 3] or merely act as a new sort of environment in which and recall ever-increasing amounts of information about our they work [4]. Rather we are centrally interested in what happens lives. Some welcome these trends as offering new possibilities to minds as they come to rely on the specific cognitive for self-understanding and expression. Others think that things implications of digital technology, especially digital recording have already gone too far and worry deeply about what the technology, handheld devices and all the paraphernalia of the future might hold. Does mem-tech really promise (or threaten) a mobile internet. As these technologies become increasingly radical change to the cognitive profile of human beings? If so, pervasive in our culture, it is interesting to ask what if anything how are we to assess the possibilities and attempt to understand might be happening to our minds in the process. Most whether they offer a hopeful or dangerous turn in the human specifically we will focus on those digital technologies which condition? This paper attempts to develop a balanced may be reshaping human memory4. understanding of current trends in mem-tech and also consider Despite avoiding the ontological question, we will use a some of its more probable future trends. In so doing it identifies terminology which suggests a tentative endorsement of the four factors about the new memory devices: Capaciousness; extended mind hypothesis by referring to E-Memory and O- incorporability; autonomy; and entanglement that suggest not Memory. The term O-Memory we here use to refer to organic just technical, but important psychological implications. or, perhaps better, organismic memory. O-Memory refers to an undoubtedly heterogeneous set of systems and processes which underlie the ways in which human beings and their brains retain 1 INTRODUCTION and organise knowledge during episodes of experience which they can later bring to mind to put to work in a variety of ways. Human nature and intelligence is not just a matter of our genetic E-Memory similarly is used to refer to a heterogeneous bunch of endowment but relies heavily on a variety of factors including devices and systems which fulfil similar functions either by our cultural background, historically specific modes of thought replacement, extension or augmentation. One recent study[5] and, not least, the pre-existing artefactual world into which we details how E-Memory5 systems can support a range of human are born. Artefacts have in a variety of ways altered the lives of memory functions, including what the authors call the five Rs, human beings and, directly or indirectly, the way we think. namely: recollecting, reminiscing, retrieving, reflecting and Technologies which work more directly on our cognitive remembering intention; the latter referring to way E-Memory abilities we can call cognitive technologies2.Yet, in fact, many systems (such as Microsoft Outlook) can allow us to track tasks, developments of tools can bring with them changes in the modes projects and actions that we intend to perform. Still, we should or scope of human thinking. A favourite example of mine is remember that the E / O Memory distinction is a conceptual cooking. Developing the ability to cook meat with fire may have division. One of the mains points of interest of this article is to dramatically reduced the amount of time early humans needed to shift our focus toward the current and future hybrid systems that spend finding food hence releasing time in which to think and, are being forged as E and O-Memory systems interact in ever perhaps, invent culture. However, pragmatically including more intimate ways. cooking as a cognitive technology makes the scope of any On the rough (and in several ways) problematic definition of enquiry very large. We have to narrow this scope somehow. cognitive technology just offered, we are spending ever- Provisionally let’s take cognitive technologies to be those increasing amounts of time interacting with a new regime of technologies that perform functions which, were they to be cognitive technologies and especially E-Memory systems that performed by the human brain, would be regarded as cognitive3. have become a constant background to many everyday cognitive No special claims are here made on whether or how cognitive tasks. Google, Wikipedia and an ever-enlarging panoply of smart technologies, or indeed other environmental resources might phones, personal gadgets, devices and software technologies, actually count as part of the mind. We will here side-step the seem to be performing a variety of cognitive functions which ontological discussion around the extended mind and defend no either relate to, replace or augment O-Memory systems. These technologies include the encoding, storing and retrieval of 1 memories and the full range of the five Rs just mentioned. And Institute for Philosophy of Language, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Av. de Berna, 26 - 4º piso, Portugal. Email: yet as these technologies and our habitual use of them is [email protected] increasingly becoming a part of everyday life, the tendency is for 2 Richard Gregory coined the related term mind tools [1] to refer artefacts that have a direct effect on the way we think. However, the term 4 cognitive technology seems to be in more general academic usage and Although we will mainly stay clearly of the ontological discussion it is even has its own journal: Cognitive Technology Journal published by interesting that memory seems to be becoming a crucial test instance for Robert Rager Press. the extended mind. 3 5 This way of looking at thing closely follows Clark and Chalmers The authors were actually specifically discussing lifelogging, which we original article on the extended mind. [2] shall come to shortly. them to become invisible, fading into the background of software in people’s hands that can put this information to everyday life and skilled action. innovative and exotic purposes. Considering the amount of time we now spend interacting The invention and widespread permeation of these with these technologies, and arguably the possible profound technologies seem sure to have deep and widespread social implications for our minds, a series of important questions need consequences and perhaps offer to transform the way that both to be addressed about what might be happening to us in the individuals and a society recollect and give meaning to both their process. What are the cognitive implications of relying heavily personal and collective pasts. This process is continuing to the on prosthetic technologies which fulfil tasks and functions that point that some now think it makes sense to believe that in the we once would have performed with our brains alone? To focus near-future we will seek to record the sum total of our on memory, the main subject of this article: How are organic experience: the dream (or chimera) of total capture [5] or total memory systems being changed by our encounters with and recall [17]. increasingly heavy usage of E-Memory devices? Given the If there is little doubt that we have seen a technical E-memory central role memory plays in our cognitive architecture and its revolution, then should we expect that our O-Memory systems role in constituting our sense of self, is our use of E-Memory will change and adapt to accommodate them? Before tackling already or likely to start changing our basic cognitive profile? this question directly, however, it is worth asking whether what And, if so, how? Does this have implications for our broader we are seeing is really novel. E-Memory is far from being the humanity and the sorts of beings we are? These are deep first technology to change how we use our organic systems. questions then and difficult to answer; but we can no longer Arguably the history of the human race is in part of the history of afford to ignore them. how our O-Memory systems have been undergoing a constant In fact these questions have not passed entirely unnoticed in process of elaboration and adaptation as we have created wave the wider culture; there are a series of authors who are deeply after wave of extended memory technologies [18, 19]. From worried about what might be happening to us [6-11] in the spoken language – if it can be counted a technology [20] – process of our mass adoption of these technologies. Some of this through drawing and painting [21], to the development of work is a serious attempt to engage with what these technologies counting systems, knots in rope, to writing systems [22, 23], might be doing in interaction with our minds and some of it has a through the development of record-keeping bureaucracies, the more sensationalist cast. This rather pessimistic outlook on what whole history of human art and technology can be seen as a might be born out of this interaction between the mind and the history of revolutions in memory. And that is not even to make new cognitive technologies is interesting in the light of some of mention of techniques which have sought to reorganise the more utopian things that have previously been written about (generally upgrade) human memory, from classical training in the internet’s cognitive implications [12-14]. mnemotechics, to the medieval training use of memory If anything, we are currently going through a backlash against palaces[23], to the rote learning systems practiced in twentieth- such utopian thinking and so now, more than ever, we need to century schools. All of these inventions can be seen as important keep open the possibility that technology can add, as well as historical moments when our relationship with the technology of subtract, from the mind. Arguably, the history of technology and memory has undergone fundamental changes. the mind up until now has been one where technologies with the It is thus highly contestable that the purported reorganization most important intellectual implications, from writing, to the of memory around particular technologies today is really book, to the telescope, to the microscope have given the mind historically unprecedented. Yet, it is surely worth pondering more than they have taken away. This article is an attempt to get what, if anything, is new or distinctive about the particular a grasp on how mem-tech (digital memory technology) might cognitive technologies which are currently being developed. already be having profound effects not just on organic Only then can we decide if they might have novel cognitive and (biological and traditional practices) of memory, but on our psychological implications for the human race. I suggest there sense of self, and our wider processes of thinking. are four aspects of the current crop of E-Memory technologies that have important qualitative or quantative differences from previous mem-tech and that we should focus our attention here 2 E-MEMORY, LIFELOGGING AND ITS to understand what is really new. They are: COGNITIVE IMPLICATIONS 1. Capaciousness & Comprehensiveness: E-Memory promises to record our everyday activities on a scale and with a Just as the amount and density of information that is being fidelity and completeness that would have been practicably recorded about us in everyday life is ever-increasing [11, 15], so unimaginable under previous regimes of mem-tech. the ability of everyman to record the sound, images and many 2. Incorporability: E-Memory technologies potentially other sorts of digital traces of his life are showing a similar possess a transparency of use that makes them competitors (or expansion [16]. The early twenty-first century has already seen a complements) with certain of our internal resources. They are massive increase in the cheapness, availability and capacity of thus poised for deep and pervasive integration with O-Memory digital recording, storage and retrieval technologies that have systems. placed an ever expanding arsenal of external memory technology 3. Autonomy: E-Memory repositories increasingly do not in the hands of millions of people. The availability of cheap merely store data but actively process it. Thanks to tagging, digital voice recorders and mega-pixel cameras embedded in indexing and AI systems we can expect E-Memory systems to mobile phones, as well as the powerful smart phones and tablets not merely store and re-present information, but restructure it in that many carry about all mean that increasing numbers of us are a way that complements our native cognitive profile. recording detailed records of our lives in ways which would 4. Entanglement: E-Memory often tracks interactions have been scarcely possible only a few years ago. In addition, between people (or people and organisations). The form of the apps on smart phones and tablets are placing an arsenal of new data that composes many E-Memory stores is inherently make a total record of an individual’s sensory experiences: total relational6. capture [17]. In fact he more usually speaks about total recall: Although there are no doubt many other dimensions of E- the ability to use all of this information to recollect any event in Memory technology which could have profound implications, his past with total fidelity. Bell sees his quest for total capture each of the four I suggest picks out a quite fundamental aspect of and recall as in the tradition of inscription found at the entrance the new mem-tech and, moreover, each is also a candidate for to the Oracle of Delphi: Know Thyself. Moreover Bell sees having important implications for O-memory, our minds more MyLifeBits as allowing him to develop new ways of knowing widely, our sense of self and even our humanity. We will now oneself that are a historic departure for the human race. Bell look in more detail at what is potentially novel about each of thinks his devices can allow him to know himself in ways no these aspects of the technologies before returning to their human has achieved before. cognitive and psychological implications. Viktor Mayer- Schönberger is another who believes that the The most commented upon aspect of E-Memory is its possibilities of E-Memory and ‘recording as default setting’ promises to be able to record, and perhaps recall just about portend profound effects on us, but he is far less sanguine about everything we might experience. This claim to a totality of the prospects and, at the very least, he thinks it forces us to capture and recall we have called Capaciousness and confront a new problem: How to forget, Comprehensiveness. Perhaps the trend or idea that brings this out most clearly is lifelogging. Lifelogging consists of creating a “through millennia, forgetting has remained just a bit personal and ever more detailed digital multimedia record of easier and cheaper than remembering. How much we one’s life as it happens. Compared to any previous regime of remembered and how much we forgot changed over memory technology it makes an important departure. The aim of time, with tools and devices emerging to aid our lifelogging is that rather than making the decision and effort to memory. But, fundamentally, we remembered what we take a photo or record a telephone conversation, or make an somehow perceived as important enough to expend that entry in a diary; recording becomes effortless and the default extra bit of effort on, and forgot most of the rest. Until setting7. recently, the fact that remembering has always been at The practice may be viewed as only making explicit a trend least a little bit harder that forgetting helped us humans which is already deeply embedded among heavy users of the avoid the fundamental question of whether we would like to remember everything forever if we could. Not new digital technologies. Perhaps the most thoroughgoing and pervasive experiment so far attempted has been carried out by anymore" [15] pg. 49. Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell. Bell is a septuagenarian Mayer- Schönberger believes we are on the cusp of changing researcher with Microsoft but was an early pioneer of the a fundamental feature of our psychological lives with E-Memory networked computer. The project, directed by Bell and his technology. He worries that ‘total capture’, rather than putting us Microsoft colleague Jim Gemmell, is called MyLifeBits8. As Bell in deeper touch with ourselves, might reshape and even tells the story, the project began with his desire to digitise, store undermine our sense of self in profound ways. Much of this and catalogue the books and articles he had written over the turns not so much on how much information we might store, but years. But, as the project progressed, Bell was no longer content how we are starting to use it. (We shall return to this issue in with simply backing-up hardcopy but, as the technologies came section 4 below). online, Bell’s aspiration became the creating of a digital record Our second factor, Incorporability, deals with the ways E- of everything he hears, thinks and sees. With this new Memory might facilitate, bond with, augment or replace O- orientation the MyLifeBits project turned its focus to capturing Memory such that the technology becomes second nature to the the ongoing stream of sensory information more or less as Bell user, or, to use a more technical term, transparent-in-use. The himself received it. sense here derives ultimately from Heidegger’s observation that Today, Bell not only has software on his computer to record when we use a piece of equipment with which we are skilfully and capture his every webpage visit, but he wears a SenseCam: a familiar, we cease to notice it as an object in itself with its own device which can be set to detect the presence of faces and was properties and our attention instead flows toward the task at hand automatically set by Bell to take photos of those he encounters as and object on which we are working. Many technologies, he goes through his day[24]. Bell has also been experimenting to including, in Heidegger’s example, the humble hammer, can do similar things with audio technology and has equipment become transparent to the skilled user in the relevant respect. But which records and attempts to categorise all of his conversations arguably there are aspects of how E-Memory systems might (and not just those on the phone). Bell now speaks about his aim become transparent-in-use that are qualitatively new. To pose as nothing less than to use electronic memory technologies to this as a question: What happens when knowledge technologies 9 become cognitively transparent in this way? 6 There are several technical innovations behind these The inspiration for this notion comes from data-entanglement, see: [16] 7 knowledge-technologies but of central importance is the Work which foreshadows lifelogging can be traced back at least to the availability of high bandwidth mobile connections, powerful 1980s in the work of such pioneers as Steve Mann who was mobile devices, cloud computing and, centrally, internet search. experimenting with using digital cameras to record his everyday activities. In 1994 Mann set about using a wireless webcam to record is This ubiquitous computing technology makes it possible for us daily life 24 / 7 for artistic, experimental and in part also political reasons: Mann’s project was political in that he was seeking to invert 9 trends toward the surveillance of public space with an ever-growing I am here using the idea of knowledge technologies in a different way arsenal of CCTV cameras, he aimed to surveil the surveillers. from cognitive technologies. The idea is supposed to be more specific 8 A detailed description of this project and Bell´s motivations can be and is used to mean technologies with a role in propagation of found in: [17] knowledge. Many internet technologies are prime examples. to have constant access to huge amounts of data, and mobile data activeness and autonomy of E-Memory technologies might turn applications, that may already compete with the authority of our out be their most distinctive characteristic. How we adjust organismic resources. As these technologies become more cognitively and socially to this autonomy is likely to be key in mobile (effectively a constant in our lives), ever easier to interact our future relationship with E-Memory systems. with, while our skills in using them deepen, it is likely we will To elaborate further, it is not merely that Google is easy to tend to rely on them – incorporate them in our cognitive world - use and returns information quickly but that it is itself an active to an ever-greater extent. memory. Google, by storing pointers to, and ratings of, the mass Could there ever come a point where it is just easier to rely on of information which is available through the internet can return ambient (or even biologically grafted in) memory devices than a page rank on any search term in a fraction of a second. Its our own native O-Memory resources? Consider an example now database of content is constantly updated but, more importantly, familiar to many millions of users: Google Search. The internet for us, so are the algorithms and processes that are used to find based technology for finding information has for some time been that information. Information is not passively retained by Google used by many office workers dozens of times a day. As these but - in the pursuit of its twin goals of being useful and turning a search applications are increasingly accessed by mobile devices, profit - it is constantly being sifted and sorted with ever more they are rapidly becoming a constant part of the epistemic sophisticated techniques with information undergoing processing backdrops of our lives. With Google Search it is often quicker and augmentation in various ways. (This is not even mentioning and easier to find out facts we might otherwise remember using projects such as Streetview where Google is also creating huge O-Memory. Consider the act of bringing to mind the first name new databases from scratch and using this to augment the of an artist whose name is on the tip of your tongue, say the information it holds and points at). drummer with a band you once loved but haven’t thought about Thanks to the relative autonomy and active processing nature in years. In the recent past you might wrack your brains trying to of E-Memory we can expect that it will become ever more recall the name or try to think of something else assuming it will transparent in use; although it is likely to become at the same come to you in a short while. Today for millions of users of time more opaque in its workings. The implications of this are desktop computers and mobile devices you might instead type that we may use it with felicity but increasingly have less idea of what you remember into the Google search engine. (I just typed how it works. It is not just that technologies like Google may be ‘drummer roxy mudic’, I meant to type ‘drummer Roxy Music’, passing beyond our powers of easy analysis but that companies but my inaccuracy doesn’t matter as the answer ‘Paul like Google, in order to protect their competitive advantage, will Thompson’ comes back in 0.3 seconds.) Typing a search query continue to try to obscure the deep working of their technology. now often seems easier and in some cases more accurate than There is a partial equivalence here with our native organic relying on our native O-Memory systems. In such circumstances systems, as most people do not understand the deep workings of typing search queries (or speaking into iPhones), has already their minds either. (It has been the job of scientific psychology to become an everyday part of the recollection process itself. attempt to understand the principles of organic human memory Deep incorporation will turn on several factors of our use of and there remains much work to be done.) But the type of these technologies. Of importance here is not merely how easy it autonomy of E-Memory means that the user’s relationship with is to interact with facility and effortlessness with our E-Memory it is likely to be very different to his relationship with his organic devices, but how available they are to be incorporated into the memory. The main reason is arguably nothing to do with the patterns of everyday activities and thinking. To put this another technology per se but that the companies who are building E- way, it is not merely how transparent-in-use they become to us, Memory systems are likely to have different interests from the but how deeply we come to rely on them. Other issues of users of the technology. This may ultimately be a limit on how importance are: The constancy and reliability of the resources; our trust relationships with the new cognitive technologies the constancy of our reliance on them; and perhaps centrally, our develop and perhaps upon whether we should ever ontologically trust in them.10 It is likely that deep incorporability does not consider such technologies as a part of our extended mind. merely depend on bandwidth or ease of use but on how The way that E-Memory is likely to be organised, at least in comfortable we become with the idea of relying on E-Memory the short term, is as much around the interests of corporations systems to make important decisions in our lives. Factors that making software as anything we decide. What is made visible to influence this trust are likely to depend heavily on the social and others may not be what we desire. The conditions under which institutional landscape in which these technologies emerge. information is made visible to us is often something of which we When one wrote an entry in one’s diary - even if one were are not even aware. Edgerank, the algorithm which Facebook using it in the way of Otto from Clark and Chalmer’s famous uses to present timelines to its users is not in the public domain thought experiment [2] – one might reasonably expect the record (de facto cognitively impenetrable). Most users are not even to remain the same when one next came to look at it. E-Memory aware that they do not see a large proportion of the updates of technologies however, have an ever more active profile and their ‘friends’. It may even be that, given the large amount of anything recorded with current tech is likely to be able to be information that flows through systems like Facebook, such represented back to its user in any number of augmented ways. selective presentation is necessary, but this surely also has E-memory devices can increasingly be expected to have the ethical and cognitive implications, especially if these systems capacity to reorganise and repurpose the information they become deeply entwined with our minds. present in ways that are increasingly open-ended and The autonomy of E-Memory technology is perhaps the reconfigurable. E-Memory ‘stores’ are really active repositories qualitative dimension which sets it most apart most from which increasingly transform and augment what they hold. This previous regimes of memory technology. Moreover, it is likely that ever more active and perhaps autonomous E-memory 10 systems will become increasingly pervasive. However as this All issues which echo Clark and Chalmers Extended Mind Paper. happens, we are likely to find others sampling our activities to EVERNOTE as a sort of long-term prosthetic memory and find patterns just as often as systems working to sample it for CURIO as an extension to his working memory. Many cognitive ourselves. This brings us to our fourth issue: Entanglement. tasks that would be done entirely internally by most people are The idea of memory entanglement is that much of the data we now being handled by the Deacon with his remaining organic are creating now, and the systems that control it, operate in part resources in interactions with the E-Memory systems organised to stimulate or replicate recollection (such as Facebook history), through an iPod, Tablet or his home computer. His ability to is so deeply entangled with the lives of others to the point that it make use of this complex to edit a blog and look after a ministry cannot accurately be considered data about individuals at all. (he has become ordained since suffering the most serious aspects What systems like facebook really track, are patterns of of memory loss) is impressive, even inspirational. Given the interaction. Social Media has been the main driver of this trend, profundity of his O-Memory deficits, Deacon Patrick’s ability to but as it has expanded to encompass much of the activity of the live his life in a positive manner is undoubtedly extraordinary. It internet some of our most personal data is now not only not held also indicates some of the possibilities E-Memory systems have by us, but is deeply entangled with that of others. to be integrated in the life and mind of an agent. Data from entangled repositories is already used to occasion Another use of E-Memory devices by someone suffering from memory processes, either according to our own wishes or memory impairment is reported by the developers of the because some organisation has chosen to remind us of something SenseCam in their attempts to help a female patient known as for its own purposes. The lines of who owns what are morally (if Mrs. B. who has severe memory impairment following limbic not legally) very blurred. Some are deeply worried by this [15], encephalitis) [24, 26]. Mrs B and her husband use a sensecam to although there is a case to be made that there is really nothing record the events of their everyday life as they happen and then new here. It is, after all, not merely our digital traces but our use desktop computer software to ‘recollect’ these events lives that are necessarily entangled with the lives of others. With together. Mrs B’s capacity when using the sensecam and then or without digital media this is unavoidable. The desire to reviewing playback with her husband is as high as 70% recall for withdraw ourselves from public entanglement might really be a significant events (when she and her husband used written flight from the very idea of engagement with others [10]. records as a comparison it is as low as 44%) [26]. It should be Moreover, the types of entanglement made available by social noted that the way they seem to be using the camera is not media are probably changing rapidly. Some people apparently ‘record-everything-by-default’ in true lifelogging fashion. now use Facebook in the way people might have used diaries in Rather, they take photos in the more traditional manner when the past. But a social network diary must function for very they see something worthy of recording. Also note that Mrs B different purposes and presumably plays a different role for the and her husband are using E-Memory in a highly collaborative individual. fashion in order to aid her recollection: they sit at a desktop Considering entanglement together with the autonomy point computer and review together pictures taken over a day. just discussed raises interesting questions about the determinants Nevertheless the SenseCam seems to have had positive of how social media might help us to remember and forget. implications both for Mrs B’s O-Memory systems and for her Facebook’s edgerank algorithm is not a passive memory of our life with her husband. interactions with others. To the extent that its workings are Or, consider again Gordon Bell’s MyLifeBits project. opaque to us – and in part this is the flipside to transparency in Implicitly a major aim of the project appears to be to build an E- use – we are not even aware of the criteria by which it might Memory that supports certain sorts of memory decline through help us recall certain interactions with others. The properties of aging. One part of this is incorporating face-recognition software future E-Memory / O-Memory hybrid systems are likely to turn into Bell’s setup that can, on a real-time basis, report the name heavily on these sorts of interactions. and contextual information - such as the last time Bell met a given acquaintance or the contents of an email from them - as Bell meets them going about his everyday life. So where Bell 3 FUSING ORGANIC AND E-MEMORY might have otherwise forgotten a one-time colleague’s name, or some important information about her, his good devices are able Just as the central thought experiment to illustrate the idea of the to give the appropriate cue just as he needs it. extended mind in the original article[2] featured Otto, who The intensive use of E-Memory might then eventually get a suffered with Alzheimer’s, some of the most suggestive work on foothold in the senior population or among those with O- E-Memory and O-Memory integration has involved those Memory disabilities, as people start to use E-memory as a suffering from memory deficits. Deacon Patrick Jones for straightforward replacement for fading organic memory systems, instance suffered from Traumatic Brain Injury, leaving him with or with those who have O-Memory deficits for other reasons. anterograde amnesia (inability to acquire new long-term But as these technologies get used more widely it is likely memories) and difficulties in making use of existing ones. they will start to support a whole range of extended cognitive Deacon Jones describes the profundity of some of the difficulties functions. Similar systems to Bell’s could use the internet to in the context of meeting his children: “When they walk through prompt users with information the user may never have the door, I don’t know whether they will be three or thirty, I just encountered before, perhaps instantaneously Googling an try to interact with them as I find them.”[25] unfamiliar colleague and providing unknown information as Nevertheless Deacon Jones has made considerable inroads though it were remembered. Thus E-Memory technology might into overcoming at least some of his problems by using the note quickly come to support other cognitive functions as much as taking software EVERNOTE and mind mapping software simply replace existing resources. In this way, E-Memory CURIO on his computer and through his iPhone. Thanks to devices might quickly shade into cognitive augmentation cloud computing this software and his data store is available to devices. him whenever he needs it in his everyday life. He uses  We might worry about this rapid evolution but it is also worth devices and the sorts of interactions that may take place in true reflecting that this may be the natural trajectory of all complementarity are likely to be subtle and complex. technologies as novel uses are continually found for inventions If this analysis is along the right lines then rather than simply not necessarily intended by their creators. If this is right, the path trading E-Memory for O-Memory it makes more sense – to the future is created as replacement or support seamlessly especially within the broader history of mem-tech – to think of transitions into augmentation. an ongoing dovetailing process where technological and organic The open-endedness of this possible cognitive transformation systems fuse in the overall organisation of the agent in a way is a source of worry to many commentators. Some have that need not imply any necessary diminishment. Shouldn’t we suggested that, as we rely ever-more on digital prosthesis, our then learn to stop worrying and love the new mem-tech? organic capacities are under threat of atrophying [7]. Others that our humanity itself might be undermined [10]. What are the implications for those with ‘normal’11 memory profiles for the 4 PERSONAL IDENTITY, SUPER SELVES widespread adoption and incorporation of E-memory systems AND FORGETTING into their cognitive ecology? Could the reliance on E-Memory foreshadow a decline in our organic memory systems in the The idea that memory might be the key to our sense of self is a general population? longstanding one going back at least to Locke, who held that A basic premise of the organisation of organic memory while it was consciousness that constituted the unity of persons systems and the deployment of neural resources appears to be and self, memory was the means of connecting consciousness ‘use it or lose it’. Think for example of how somatosensory over time. In the contemporary discussion, the idea of an cortex remaps itself when a limb is lost. It is possible, that at extended (or narrative) self which can be unified over time is a least with regards to certain domains of knowledge, we will start clearly related notion and so memory continues to play an to be able to explicitly remember less with organic systems as important role in what many theorists think makes us persons we use E-Memory systems more intensively. But the integration [28, 29]. Yet from Reid’s response to Locke until today it has of E and O systems may be more complex that a zero sum game. been widely accepted that human memory is a problematic and The complementarity principle [27] holds that we will adopt fallible medium with which to achieve unification12, for it is extended resources insofar as they complement our basic widely agreed that neither memory, nor narrative, are able to (organic) cognitive architecture. The idea is that ambient reliably achieve self-identity over time. resources will be useful insofar as they provide functions which, The MyLifeBits project and its successors might give us pause rather than replace, contrast with the brain’s native methods of for thought, however. Our forgoing discussion of cognitive and cognition and representation. If this is right, one would expect us memory augmentation suggests an interesting possibility. E- to make use of E-Memory insofar as it makes available resources Memory, when used, as an adjunct to O-Memory might help us that are new and different from our native organic (or otherwise better fulfil the conditions for unity over time. Perhaps, by being already enhanced) memory resources. On this analysis it is able to store and then recall episodes in his life he might precisely because E-Memory – like other memory resources of otherwise have forgotten through E-Memory systems, Bell, or the past – is offering something that is different from our native other E-Memory pioneers, could potentially achieve a level of abilities, that there is likelihood it will be incorporated. unity that us un-augmented humans cannot. This suggests the Here consideration of the idea of the extended mind has some possibility that future humans, making extensive use of very interesting implications. If what really matters about us is the authoritative and densely incorporated E-Memory systems, course-grained functional profile of our minds then the might have or become Super-Selves: Human beings whose unity distribution of our cognitive resources between internal and over time is supported and guaranteed by their deep prosthetic systems might really not matter very much. This may incorporation of an extended regime of E-Memory technologies be one way of relaxing about the implied disuse of organic and devices. memory systems if we come to rely ever more heavily on However enhanced unity over time might, in several ways, be electronic prosthesis. counterproductive. Imagine Fred’s teenage years are extensively Another reason turns on more practical concerns of how we documented by technologies like Facebook and feature episodes use these technologies. Consider the satellite-navigation devices that in later years he would rather forget. Unfortunately, the that many of us now use in our cars. Now consider using one to social media traces Fred has left behind him are proving more navigate an unfamiliar city over a period of weeks. One could persistent than he would like. Part of the problem is they are imagine that using the sat-nav in this way might prevent one ever entangled with the traces left by others. Photos he would sooner coming to learn to pattern of the city. Yet this does not seem to now delete do not merely exist in his profile, but in the profiles be the case. Instead the sat-nav gives one the possibility to drive of his ‘friends’ and moreover now proliferate through other to a destination while knowing next to nothing about where one systems that have reproduced them. Such traces plausibly might is or where one is going other than the destination address. continue to shape and influence his sense of himself; its ongoing However, using the device over a period of weeks gradually persistence could even constrain his future and what he might familiarises the driver with the pattern of the roads in the city to become. the point the driver develops a good practical understanding of For related reasons, some [8, 10] have started to worry that its navigation. Eventually it is no longer necessary to use the this persistence of certain types of entangled E-Memory might device. Really this should be no surprise as our O-Memory have seriously detrimental effects on humans beings in general, systems do not just stop working because we employ E-Memory 12 For a nice recent discussion of the issues at stake and especially how 11 Of course there is no implication here that aging is not normal. these relate to recent findings about O-Memory, see [30] but in particular on identity formation among young adults [10]. remembered this notion of self is very different to the tradition For, if we assume that some experimentation is necessary for the begun by Locke. The very idea here is that selves are unified development of a stable and developed personality, then perhaps thinking things, not masks. Nevertheless if this inward sense of the capaciousness and authority of E-Memory might indeed risk self is strongly influenced by public performance then the undermining something essential in the human character: our facilities that social network technologies make available seem capacity to move on from the past. Thus, we may come to see likely to play a role in this. certain types of E-Memory as more of a prison than a source of Even with the fledging E-Memory technology of today we do useful reflection. Some now belief we need to develop not consider ourselves infallible and our remembrance is often institutional devices that declares some sort of moratorium on open to revision, especially if we find that other people – or the potentially total retention of E-Memory [10, 31]13. sources – remember or portray things differently. We already Mayer-Schönberger goes further and argues that forgetting is have to factor in the vagaries of memory into our lives. Perhaps an integral part of human memory which plays an essential role in the future it will just be a little harder to indulge in certain in our cognitive profile and what it means to be human [15]. As outright fictions about ourselves. Schacter [32] and others have pointed out, recollection at least is But it is not clear why this should endanger our sense of self a largely reconstructive process. Each time we access a memory per se. E-Memory’s de facto entanglement with others in many it can, at a neural level, be understood as being recreated. ways is continuous with how a sense of self is constructed in the Forgetting is in part a process where our minds selectively past: i.e. through interactions with others. That Mayer- maintain that which is useful for them and (as Freud knew) Schönberger assumes rather than demonstrates that our sense of suppress much that is inessential or unhelpful. Forgetting may self (or personal identity) might be undermined by E-Memory is not be a bug in human memory but part of what the self- largely to do with how individuals come into conflict with regulatory architecture of our minds does in order to have selves organisations that can now more readily access and store more at all, at least as we currently understand them. Arguably our information about us than we would wish[11]. The growing identity as unique human beings arises not just out of what we imbalances of power between individuals and the companies that remember but out of what we forget. On this analysis rather than hold ever increasing amounts of information about us is creating a super-self, E-Memory supported remembrance might undoubtedly a problem [e.g., 11] but this is a rather separate actually undermine our sense of self. issue from the determinants of our sense of self. On the strongest interpretations, E-Memory Entanglement becomes a sort of dominating determinant of our sense of self [8]. Mayer-Schönberger believes that if we come to accept that 5 SELF-KNOWLEDGE, POINT OF VIEW AND E-Memory can challenge the authority of our organic systems THE DEEP COGNITIVE BACKGROUND then we are in danger of losing something crucial about what it is to have or be a self. In a basic sense, if E-Memory systems Do the limits of the organic processes of consciousness and O- seem more authoritative than our organic resources, our sense of Memory really exhaust all we might wish to know about self might become something estranged from us or alien. Yet this ourselves? This seems unlikely. The potential uses of E-Memory seems to approach a contradiction. Surely if there is anything devices precisely promises to make available, or make explicit, which we have authority over it is our sense of self. Could the information about aspects of our lives and ourselves that deep incorporation of E-Memory lead to a possible outcome otherwise would be hidden in the background. Whether we will where the sense of self is not really our own anymore? all always be happy with the forms of self-knowledge this This discussion of the entanglement of E-Memory brings up information makes available is certainly questionable. But our some difficult problems about the very meaning of the term self. felicity is surely no criterion for what should count as Namely, self is taken by many – especially those trained in knowledge. sociology – as rather than being something private (a hidden We need to take a step back from questions of power essence, character or set of memories), as something public and imbalances – important though they are – and ask whether E- interactive. A dominant influence on the contemporary Memory might nevertheless offer us new resources to discussion of how social network technologies might interact constructively reflect on ourselves. Gordon Bell has been with our sense of self is the work of Goffman [33] who is taken engaged in a practical form of this project and, as we have seen, to say that the self should be understood less as an inner essence conceives of the MyLifeBits project as a Delphic investigation and more a public mask or series of performances14. (In fact, into self-knowledge. We need to take seriously the claim that we Goffman maintains a distinction between self and mask which could come to reflect on and know ourselves in ways that only many of his followers tend to collapse.) But it must be this technology could make available. Let us consider again the claim that E-Memory can deepen self-knowledge by paying attention to the four factors which we previously held seem 13 Although there is not space to fully do this point justice here I think likely to be of the greatest cognitive and psychological import: we must remember that not all societies have had a moratorium on Comprehensiveness; Incorporability; Autonomy; and youthful memories. The teenage years, where this sort of Entanglement. In addition we will consider whether our experimentation often occurs, are a particularly 20 th Century invention interaction with systems with these properties might alter the and there have been many societies in the history of the world that have sorts of beings we are. been hostile to this sort of personal experimentation. This is not to say that such experimentation is not important and valuable to us but it Let us first consider some objections: It could be argued that seems to stretch the issue to make it something necessary for the Bell’s dream of achieving an enhanced (perhaps even total?) development of a sense of self per se. form of self-knowledge with MyLifeBits is premised on a 14 mistake about what self-knowledge is. Bell may be collecting It’s highly questionable if this is even a coherent interpretation of Goffman, see [30] page 104 – 105. and digitizing data about himself with an unprecedented Scenario 2 – Let us imagine a more advanced E-Memory comprehensiveness, but that does not make it self-knowledge. system which is more active, autonomous and deeply One reason to suppose this is that the data and E-Memory incorporated than the previous version. Instead of waiting the systems that Bell has amassed do not really count either as part agent to perform a search it continually prompts him when it of him, or his memory. Insofar as the E-Memory data does not notices something that might be useful. The system is active in deeply interact with Bell’s own O-Memory systems, (it remains helping to organise the agent’s attention. inferentially chaste), this seems a reasonable point. However E- Such a system might integrate a SenseCam and similar Memory systems that are both easily incorporable and recording devices that capture images every couple of seconds autonomous might quickly override such concerns. (We shall and other contextual traces as the agent goes about his everyday look at an example that touches on this point in a moment.) business. It would automatically store these traces in an active Another objection is that self-knowledge, is not merely database where various algorithms tag and do further processing knowledge about oneself, but is only a distinctive category on them. Those traces could then to be contextually recalled insofar as it is really the agent’s own knowledge. To put this when useful. (We have already discussed such a system: the one another way, self-knowledge proper has to in addition belong to Bell uses to retrieve a colleague’s name when they appear in the agent or be integrated into the agent in such a way as it can view.) be said to have the property of mineness. Of course this does not This mark 2 system is, in addition, constantly on the look-out solve the problem as we now have to be clear about what it for images or other traces that contain persons or objects already would mean for an E-Memory system or its contents to have this tagged as interesting. It ‘notices’ the recurrence of such property. One possibility of what we should want to mean by interesting material in the current sensory stream and cues the mineness is that the system is deeply integrated into the agent user through some reality augmentation equipment. Over a itself, and / or forms part of the agent’s perspective, or point of period of time, as the agent interacts with and felicitously view. E-Memory systems might thus really ‘belong’ to the agent deploys such a technology, it might become – like Google search insofar as they are deeply integrated into his cognitive processes, today - second nature for him (and thus transparent-in-use). or form integral parts of his viewpoint. An interesting implication here is that even images or other Even if this is right, it is interesting that it may not disqualify traces that are stored in the database, and that the agent never even some current uses of E-Memory systems such as those looks at or consciously reflects upon, may nevertheless play a developed by Gordon Bell. Consider how the SenseCam hangs role in his cognitive architecture. This is because those stored around Bell’s neck all day automatically taking and storing traces in aggregation can trigger processes that cue or bias what images. The images taken with it are – in a very literal sense – is presented back to the agent – acting more like an organic from Bell’s point of view. Arguably this is not however the implicit memory. Thus, the invisible and only indirectly known relevant sense of the term, for while the SenseCam may record contents of the database might start to influence the agent’s information from Bell’s point of view, it does not form part of cognitive profile. (Cognitive opacity might here go hand-in-hand his point of view. This raises the question of how and whether an with transparency-in-use). E-Memory system, or information produced by that system, Scenario 3 – In a final scenario, an E-Memory system mark 3 could ever come to count as part of one’s point of view. incorporates many and varied autonomous systems which are The following discussion will attempt to make it apparent that hooked into the internet. it is the details of exactly how an E-Memory system is This near-future E-Memory technology continually sifts one’s incorporated with our organic systems – essentially the personal cloud-based data of multimedia “memories”, perhaps functional profile of their interactions – which will really count constituted of every photo we have ever taken, every recording here. A deeply incorporated and trusted E-Memory system could of our conversations, every email, etc, etc, and cross-references indeed be considered to form a proper part of an agent’s them against the resources of the internet. viewpoint, and systems that meet these requirements are much Such a system might quickly start to seem less an adjunct to closer than we might think. our mind and more as though it were an actual part of it. Because Rather than continuing to consider these points in the abstract, of its transparent usage, and the agent’s reliance on it, such a let us now consider three scenarios where E-Memory tech gets system might become not merely a bias, but deeply incorporated progressively more embedded in an agent’s cognitive profile. with the agent’s systems of attention. This third scenario We will consider a slightly fictionalized version of Gordon suggests that the more autonomous and agentive technology, that Bell’s MyLifeBits system for illustrative purposes. we are already starting to see with some of today’s web-bots, Scenario 1 – Here, type 1 E-Memory systems primarily might start to play a more active role in the organisation of our operate in a passive way continually recording information in thoughts. good lifelogging fashion that can later be reviewed by the agent. Still the fact that mark 3 systems might incorporate in an ad The striking feature of such systems – compared to previous hoc manner unknown internet based resources suggests that regimes of memory technology - is the comprehensiveness of there may be fundamental trust issues here which would always what is being recorded and the ease with which this is done. prevent the user from treating such systems as though they were It might be thought that such systems have only minimal really parts of one’s own minds. However, standards of trust cognitive implications, yet they already make available content may differ. Deep integration might turn out to depend in part on that might contribute to one’s self-knowledge in virtue of the agent’s credulity. making available information that would otherwise be Consider a scenario sketched by Andy Clark [34, 35] where a inaccessible or absent. This is broadly how Bell uses the mark 3 E-Memory system has started to radically change what MyLifeBits system now, although it is already shading over into we mean by, and how we think of, ourselves. In a thought another system more like our second scenario. experiment Clark describes a subscriber to the Mambo-Chicken Bot, a web-bot of the near future which “has been learning However E-Memory pioneers are increasingly becoming about, and contributing to, [his] taste for the weird and exotic for hybrid agents incorporating tools and software as it proves useful three and a half decades, coming online when [he] was five and and changing their cognitive profiles in the process. first fell in love with astrophysical oddities.” [35, pp. 128-129] While we have tried to sketch some of the contours of how In the thought experiment the subject has just discovered the these changes might take place, only future research and practice Mambo-Bot has been disabled for the last three months and will reveal its reality. It may, however, quickly come to seem connects this with his feeling flat and uninspired for a while. that E-Memory might not merely facilitate new forms of self- The idea here is clear; the autonomous and deeply knowledge, but new sorts of selves. We should not incorporated cognitive technologies of the near future may well underestimate the agency both of practitioners and theoreticians contribute not only to our sense of self but what we are; and in in deciding how E-Memory should bond with O-Memory. ways that do not have clear precedents in previous regimes of We have seen that E-Memory holds open the promise of cognitive technology. novel possibilities for complementing our organic and culturally What are we to make of such systems? Are we to treat them derived memory resources. A deeper understanding of these as parts of the agent’s memory, or adjuncts? And insofar as the technologies’ novel qualities, potentialities and also the complex agent relies on the retrieval and contextual information systems and sometime contradictory roles memory plays in human life made available by advanced E-Memory systems, are we to can only help us put them to more humanistic ends and perhaps regard those systems as part of the agent himself? Partly avoid some of the more egregious pitfalls. There is little doubt constitutive of his sense of self? however that they will be playing a larger role in our lives and, We have already hinted that part of this may depend on the perhaps, our minds. cognitive transparency of the E-Memory system. At least in the MyLifeBits system, as the algorithms were largely set up by Bell to do tasks he intends, they can be naturally seen as extending REFERENCES his cognitive economy. 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