quinta-feira, 4 de setembro de 2014

Memory and after-postmodern – Part 2

Maybe the Big Data is a new level of memory, a new kind of memory, a kind of individual and collective memory that is stored in the virtual world, outside of any head. At same time, if people refuse handwriting, if people give up handwriting, if people “forget” handwriting, it can be a kind of memory loss. One is the language of Big Data, other is the language inside the brain without handwriting, and other is the language using the fingers holding a pen, even supposing that the words are the same.
Memory is stored based in senses strongly connected to verbal language. The brain cannot achieve complexity without the body and its sensory stimulations. Also, using the brain to activate the body can improve the brain capacities.
In the Postmodern Period we used to think that there were “brain people” (intellectuals, artists) opposed to “body people” (athletes, hard work). Nowadays step by step we understand that brain and body depend on each other and can help each other to improve both capabilities.
In the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century there were produced several movies about memory loss and manipulation of memory, mainly in Science Fiction. It was arousing a perception that humanity was at an increasing risk of memory loss. Memory and identity are connected things and Occidental Culture could be in a risk of identity loss in the transition from Postmodern to After-postmodern.
Is our collective memory vanishing together with “the language” of the muscles of our hands?          

segunda-feira, 1 de setembro de 2014

Memory and After-postmodern – Part 1

The last decade of the 20th Century was called “the decade of the brain”. Under the postmodern culture, the brain could be the last frontier to conquer by the power of chemistry… mind and soul were maybe only some kind of illusion produced by the machine of brain.
At the same time the Arts started to focus on variations of “memory”. Could Science manipulate memory? Could Science make us forget painful moments? Or maybe some new kind of power, political or scientific, could take over us controlling our memories?
That theme is now perhaps stronger and maybe nearer to happen in some way, although we have apparently better conditions to keep data in digital archives.
But maybe we are living some other kind of memory loss. If we do not use some of our oldest capacities, as for example, the ability of handwrite, we are losing “body-memory”, “hand-memory”, even some “neuron-memory”, as cultural memory as well.