The Panmnemonicon - History and Memory in the Age of the Search Engine

February 9, 2021 11:46 PM

History and memory are two different things, but their interpenetration makes it hard to talk about the one without talking about the other. We ordinarily suppose that, on a stroll of the mind backwards into the past, memory leaves off, and history begins, where the self itself leaves off: you can’t remember stuff from before you were born, obviously, and so once you hit that absolute boundary, you have no choice but to rely on third-person documentary sources, and that’s what we call history. 3500 words from Justin E. H. Smith at Substack on search engines and memory and history and nostalgia. Via 3quarksdaily.
posted by cgc373 (1 comment total)

Another interesting, but weirdly framed essay, (like the recent one by Laura Kipnis) where there are a lot of observations of some merit worth looking at, but fit to the author's own predilections so tightly that trying to dig them all out is difficult because they are something of a circumlocution of the writer's deeper interests that sort of sit there unspoken.

The notions around history, memory, nostalgia, and the way the internet and popular culture absorbs and transmits concepts is a compelling subject to look at, but the points Smith makes are more side swipes at those ideas fit to his own experiences than they are attempts to dig into the questions more neutrally.

Smith, from this essay and a couple I read earlier, feels like he's trying to establish his own hierarchy of values around how we look at how the past gets transmitted and understood in ways that, like Kipnis, are somewhat troubling for how they are phrased towards fitting a vague end but clearer direction of resistance to change, but also somewhat masked by the importance of the questions in how we are or decide to move forward. I appreciate the post, and as with the Kipnis article, disagree with it in its totality but find it well worth thinking about for some of the more specific questions raised.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:45 AM on February 10, 2021 [1 favorite]