Digital Hyperthymesia - On the Consequences of Living with Perfect Memory

Abstract

Through the digitisation of the externalisation of human memory and a shift in cultural perspectives, a non-forgetting artificial memory evolves. In this essay Tanne van Bree uses a metaphor for this recently emerged phenomenon: she states that we are living with Digital Hyperthymesia. This is derived from the memory condition ‘hyperthymesia’, which gives a person a superior autobiographical memory, meaning that the person can recall, without conscious effort, nearly every day of their life with great detail. The emergence of Digital Hyperthymesia is researched from a technological and cultural perspective, and possible consequences in the context of human memory are formulated. Human memory consists of a duality of remembering and forgetting. This inspired experiments in designing a digital equivalent of forgetting, which resulted in Artificial Ignorance; a product aimed to counter the mentioned influences, and was intended to instigate debate on this subject.